Mistakes Already Made
by I'mJustCrazyEnough17
Summary: What would have happened had Bridget ended up pregnant after what happened between her and Eric at the end of the first summer? What if she didn't have the guts to tell Eric? What it her life was crashing down around her? Kplus  for the general situation.
1. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2

**Summary: What would have happened had Bridget ended up pregnant after what happened between her and Eric at the end of the first summer?**

**Hi, my name is Helen. I'm 14 years old and I live in the US. I love writing, reading, YouTube (it's just so dang addicting!), and chocolate. I hope you enjoy my story, please don't forget to comment.**

Mistakes Already Made

"Bee," Carmen sobbed into Bridget's shoulder. There was nothing like sympathy, Bridget thought. It had the power to make you feel better and worse at the same time. Because maybe, if no one had sympathy for her, there really wasn't a problem. But now she had Lena, Carmen, and Tibby – even _Tibby, _for Pete's sake – on her bed, eating Bugles and crying for her. So apparently, there really was a problem. That scared Bridget.

Ever since she'd come out of the bathroom that morning in September, things had been different – _way_ different. It was the day before school started, the last day of summer, and Bridget really just wanted to be asleep. But now, her friends were here, and she'd told them what she and they had already known, and she wouldn't get to sleep that morning. Bee sighed. She really liked sleeping…

"It'll be okay," Tibby said. "We can figure something out. We'll…we'll…Oh, goodness. I don't know."

Bridget was beginning to feel a little scared.

"The baby will be perfectly fine, of course. It won't have any problems – it _can't_. Except we don't know Eric's history. Maybe he's the only normal one in his family. Maybe he has some sort of weird disease you can't see from the outside. Maybe…" Carmen would have gone on all day had Bridget not shut her up with a wave of her hand.

"Okay. What about Eric?" Lena asked sensibly from where she sat perched on top of the headboard, quietly shedding tears.

"What about him?" Bee asked. They were the first words she'd said – no, mumbled – since she'd told her friends she was pregnant.

"Don't you think he has a right to know?" Lena asked, daring Bee to say no.

"No," Bridget responded. "I don't. I think he'd be better off if he didn't know. So he couldn't feel _guilty._"

_Eric_. Bee wanted to talk to him so badly, though, she ached. She wanted to tell him. She wanted him to know what she was going through. She wanted him to be able to help, to magically make it not so. But she also knew that was impossible. So why involve him at all? Why make it like one of those teen pregnancy shows with the dad being around all the time. Or, heaven forbid…What if he didn't care?

So it was better that he not know.

"He's going to find out," Tibby said quietly from behind the bag of Bugles.

"What?" Bridget rounded on her. "No. No, he is _not_ going to find out. Of course he won't. You won't tell him, no one will tell him."

"Bee…" Carmen hummed softly. "We know you're upset, and we'll drop the Eric subject for now, but I think you might _need _him later. You know."

No, Bridget didn't know. She didn't _want_ to know. She was happier not knowing when she would need Eric. She wouldn't need anyone. She could do this alone, with just her friends to help her.

"What about school?" Lena asked practically.

"Well, I'll go until I can't anymore, and then I'll just have to take summer school," Bee said.

"When will you not be able to go anymore?" Lena asked.

"When people get too unbearable about it. When I really start showing. You know." Bridget wondered how she had a clear mind right now.

"You'll tell the school though, right?" Lena asked.

"Of course I'll tell them. I'll tell them tomorrow." Bridget knew she was probably the only girl in the entire school who could walk into the office full of school administrators and announce that she was pregnant.

"Hey, Bee?" Carmen asked.

"Yeah?"

"It'll be okay, okay? You know that. We'll all help. Your dad will help-"

"Oh, no. My _dad_!" Bee moaned. "How will I tell him?"

"We'll help. We'll be there," Tibby said, even though it looked like she really didn't want to be there at all.

"Okay," Bridget said, wiping the first tear she'd had from her eye. "Okay." Then she broke down.

**Chapter 2**

The next morning, school was as awkward as could be. Word had gotten out because some loudmouth kid had been in the office with Bridget as she'd explained the situation. And that same loudmouth kid spread it around. So Tib, Bee, Carmen, and Lena were on their own to fend off annoying people. Bridget had Lena in her English class, Tibby in her math class, Carmen in her history class, and all of them were in her gym. She was only alone for art class and study hall. So that's when people chose to attack.

"So who was it?" a girl named Carley asked as Bridget painted a picture of a soccer ball.

"Oh. Um. Just a guy I met at summer camp," Bridget explained. Wait. Did that sound bad? Was it bad?

Yeah. She guessed it was.

"Ooh. What's he look like? Where does he live?" Carley asked.

"He lives in England. He's tall, dark, and handsome," Bridget said, only lying about the England part.

"Ohh. So are you two going out now?" Carley wanted to know.

"No. It was really just a summer fling…" Bridget trailed off. Was it a fling? Or was it Bee, seducing poor Eric?

"What's his name?" Carley asked.

"His name is…Justin," Bee answered, giggling to herself.

"Hot name," Carley remarked.

How could a name be hot?

Then of course there was the group of guys at study hall.

"What are you gonna name your baby, Bridget?" they'd taunted. I thought about it for a minute, but, coming up blank, all I could say was "Go away."

"How about you name it…_Eric_?" they'd said.

Eric? How had they known? The only people in the school who knew were Tibby, Carmen, and Lena, and they wouldn't have told. Unless we'd been overheard. If we had, I didn't know what I'd do. If they'd heard about Eric, they'd heard more than that. About how I still had to tell my dad, and Perry would have found out in school…

There were so many things to think about, my head almost exploded. What if people at school knew it was a boy named Eric? How would I tell my dad? How would I explain this to Perry?

As I was thinking about Perry, he arrived behind me. The guys dispersed and Perry sat down next to me.

"Bridget, I think you need to explain," he said.


	2. Chapter 3

**I won't put two chapters in one again, sorry, that was a mistake I didn't really feel like fixing. The next chapters will hopefully be longer, too. **** Much love, Helen**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 3

Bridget's face was buried in her pillow when her dad knocked on her door. "Bridget. Did your alarm go off?"

He didn't know anything was wrong. He didn't know Bridget's world was being turned upside-down. He didn't know that school was a living nightmare because of a mistake she'd made. He didn't know anything.

No. Correction. _Bridget_ didn't know anything.

"Yes. I'm up," Bee lied. She sighed and was about to get up when her phone buzzed with a text from Tibby.

_How was your night?_ It said.

Bridget thought about dinner. With Perry shooting her meaningful glances and her dad ignoring both of them. Perry kept giving Bridget chances to tell their dad, but she didn't take any of them. "Speaking of kids, Dad…" Perry would say, "Bridget wants to tell you something."

"Yeah," Bridget would ad-lib. "I wanna babysit the next door neighbor's kids." It didn't really matter that their neighbors on both sides were old people. Her dad wasn't paying attention.

_Just peachy,_ Bridget replied. _Tell u about it l8r._

She sighed again and rolled over. She patted her stomach and thought about how there was a little part of Eric inside her right now. She thought about that night on the beach. She thought about the whole summer, and how careless she'd been. She hadn't thought of when she might crashland, and now that she had, she couldn't imagine ever standing up again and being normal. Especially not once she was just another teen pregnancy. Sixteen and pregnant, that was Bridget.

She stood up and pulled on a pair of jeans, and then put on her soccer team jersey from last year. Would she ever be able to play soccer again? Sure, once the baby grew up a little. A lot.

What about college? She'd have to take night classes or something. She'd have to finish high school like that, too. She'd have to have her dad watch him – she kept picturing it as a boy, so that was what she would refer to it as. Would he maybe take care of the baby while she finished high school? What about college? Could she ask that of him?

She didn't know. She had no idea. He barely seemed to like having her and Perry around. What about a whole other kid that wasn't even his?

And Eric. Bridget knew her friends were right. He had a right to know. But she felt like she'd failed, in some way. They'd both made a mistake, the very same mistake, and now, she was suffering for it. Did he have to suffer, too?

No, of course he didn't have to suffer. He didn't have to know at all. He could get married when he was old enough and have children when he was old enough and never even know about Bridget and his other child.

But what if she did tell him? The thought nagged at her as she ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast, pecked her dad's cheek, and left for the bus stop with Perry.

Well, if she told him, he'd be upset, of course. He'd be guilty, as she'd said. But maybe he'd help. Maybe he'd come and help her. Bridget couldn't help but be excited at that prospect. An entire summer was hard to erase, and Bee couldn't shake the crush she still had on him. Even after that had happened. Even now that she had his baby inside her stomach. Even now that he'd potentially ruined her life with his carelessness…He had a place, didn't he? Couldn't he respect that?

Would he be happy to hear from her?

These thoughts ran wild in Bridget's head until first period, when Carmen slid herself into the seat next to Bridget and said, "Bridget, I know you're having a tough time and all, but I really think you need to tell Eric."

Bridget looked at the desk. "I really think I do. But I don't know, Carmen…What if he hates me for it? What if he feels bad about it?"

"Well," Carmen said, and sounded like she would go on, but the teacher cleared her throat and began role call. Bridget sat and waited for the V's, thinking about the last time she'd done that.

_Please let me be on his team, Bridget silently begged._

_Connie consulted the ubiquitous clipboard._

"_Aaron, Susanna, team five."_

_Time to calm down; the list was alphabetical. Bridget found herself hating every girl chosen for team four._

_At last, the V's. "Vreeland, Bridget, team three."_

_She was disappointed. But when she strode forward to collect her three identical green T-shirts, she was gratified to see that Eric, whatever else he was, was not immune to her hair. _**(I don't own this – it's taken from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares, page 71.) **

Bridget sighed. "Here," she called when she heard "Vreeland, Bridget." There was no team assignment, nothing special that followed. Bridget found herself yearning for the beginning of the summer. The beginning of it all. Maybe she could have avoided this whole mess.

But would she have? She'd had _fun_ all summer long, right up until the night she and Eric hooked up for real. Maybe it was best to leave that in the past and deal with the present. But could she? Would she ever be able to just deal with the present, or was Bridget one of those people that lived in the past no matter how much present they gave themselves?

She suspected she was. She really did.

There was a crack running down the middle of the screen on her cell phone. Bridget tried to ignore it as she looked up Eric's name in the camp directory. Next to it was a number. She slowly typed it in. 555-1254. She took a deep breath. She erased the numbers from the screen, but quickly typed them in again before doing the same thing. This wasn't going to work. She needed time, she told herself. She needed…She needed to think. That was her first reason. Her second one was that he might be in class. It seemed preposterous that he had a life that she didn't know about, but he did. It was only 4PM, after all. College kids could have a class then. Or what if he was hanging out with friends? That was her third reason.

She only needed three to throw the directory in the back of her closet, put her phone back in her pocket, and pull out her math homework. She didn't want to bother him, so she wouldn't call him.

Tibby, Carmen, and Lena were coming over at five. They'd known she'd need to tell her dad when he got home, so they'd invited themselves over, each of them. And they were prepared to use force.

Bridget waited, doing her math homework with little regard as to what she was actually doing. At five o'clock, her friends rang the doorbell. At 5:30, Bridget's dad came home. At 5:35, Bridget was standing in the kitchen with her friends in the living room listening.

"Dad?" she asked.

Her dad barely looked up from the microwave, where he was making mac&cheese.

"I want your full attention for the next…two minutes, Dad. Please." Bridget wrung her hands. Her dad noticed, and he turned away from the microwave. Bridget watched it click from 4:32 to 4:31 and then 4:30 before she started talking.

"At camp in Baja…" she started. Then she changed her mind. "I met a guy this summer, Dad." She sucked in as much breath as she would need. 4:25. 4:24. "His name is Eric." 4:22. 4:21. 4:20. "We did things I should never have done. We should never have done." Her father was no longer looking at her. 4:15. 4:14. Bridget let it get all the way to 4:00 before she spit it out. "And I'm pregnant."

At this point, she honestly had no idea what her dad would do. How he would react. What he would say, how he would say it…

"Please don't respond," she said, feeling as though someone other than her was in control of her body. "Please. I want you to think about it. And then say whatever you want to speak."

Her dad didn't wait to react, though. He gathered Bridget in his arms and began to cry, which made Bridget cry, too. She cried for a different reason than him, though. She cried because he was crying. She'd made her father cry, her invincible father who hadn't cried when her mom died. He hadn't shown the sadness openly on his face, but he'd shown it in different ways. Bridget expected that to be how this was, but it wasn't at all. Now, he was just all-out crying, and that made her cry.

Somewhere in the distance, the microwave got to 0:01 and started to beep, but neither of them heard it. They didn't hear it when Tibby, Lena, and Carmen left through the front door, either. They didn't hear anything until Perry came in and asked what was for dinner before seeing them and hurriedly leaving the room.


	3. Chapter 4

**I am a writing addict, so don't be surprised if you get a few chapters a day. But sometimes I crash, or get abducted into my novel, and take a break from this. So updates will be very infrequent. I hate to leave a story hanging, though, so I'll try to finish this one. **** I'll do it with a smile if you review.**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 4

_Dear Eric,_ Bridget scrawled on the paper in front of her. A letter. If she couldn't tell him on the phone, she'd tell him with words. After all, she could force herself to write, but she couldn't force herself to talk. So now she sat at her desk in her bedroom at 2:53 AM with two words on the page. She'd been sitting here for ten minutes already. She could be done and asleep by now, but she wasn't.

_I need to tell you something._

No. Lame.

_There's something you have to know._

Is that weird?

_I'm pregnant._

Straight-forward. Maybe that's how it had to be.

Later that morning, at 7AM, Bridget put the letter in the mailbox. It was a simple letter. It just said,

_Dear Eric,_

_I'm pregnant. I thought you should know. You don't have to do anything. Just know about it, okay? I don't want you to come here. I don't want you to call. Please don't do anything about it. Please. I have lots of support here. You would just ruin it all. Don't come._

_Sincerely,_

_Bridget_

Bridget sighed. She hoped Eric would listen. She really didn't want him to come and do anything about it. She didn't even put a return address on the letter, although she knew he had a camp directory too, and could come if he put his mind to it. Bee knew that Eric coming would complicate things a lot, and she didn't need that right now. Of course she thought it would be _nice_ if he came because that meant he truly cared about her, but the logical part of her that rarely showed itself told her that if he did come it would mean trouble.

She didn't know how to make sure he didn't come, though, and still tell him about it. Something would be unsettled in her if he didn't know. She couldn't stop him from coming, though, she knew. So she'd shoved in his face how much she didn't want him to come, and that was all she could do.

_3 Months Later_

Bridget hung another ornament on the tree in her living room, posing for a picture. Tibby had her video camera and was interviewing them all about what they wanted for Christmas.

"Lena Kaligaris. Age 16. Let's find out what her grand Christmas wish is." Tibby zoomed in on Lena's face, and Lena looked uncomfortable.

"Umm…I was hoping for some new art supplies," she said, ducking out of the camera's view. Tibby gave up on her and came over to Bridget.

"Bee, what do you want for Christmas?" Tibby asked.

"Tibs. You already asked me. Remember? Five minutes ago? I said I wanted celery." Bridget put on a fake annoyed face.

"You can't want celery for Christmas, though. I'm giving you a second chance." Tibby rolled her eyes.

"Oh yeah? I'm pregnant. I can want food for Christmas if I want to." Bridget stared right into the camera lens. "But you know what else would be nice?" She put on a serious face, and Tibby leaned forward. "I'd really like my best friend Tibby to get out of my business." She cracked a smile, and Tibby stopped filming.

"Do you people understand that this is how we're always going to view Christmas this year? We're going to see Bee, who doesn't look an inch pregnant, talking about wanting celery and Lena, who already has a million art supplies, talking about wanting more. And Carmen ducking out of the room whenever possible so the camera won't spot her. Is that what you want?"

They all nodded like robots. Tibby started to laugh, and the rest of them followed suit. They laughed about everything that was funny for the next ten minutes, when they were interrupted by the doorbell.

"I'll get it," Carmen said, even though it was Bridget's house and Bridget should have gotten it. It was probably Perry and her dad, who were out for the evening at who-knows-where and had probably forgotten their key – again.

Carmen left the room, and Tibby started to film again. She swooped through the room, focusing on the crèche, the tree, the star lying on the coffee table that would soon be atop the tree, the box of ornaments left to be unpacked and placed on the tree…

And then Eric's face as he entered the room. Everyone froze. Tibby almost dropped the camera, and Bee almost dropped the oreo and celery sandwich she was eating.

"Eric?" Bridget said, slightly stunned, slightly angry, slightly glad. Very much at a loss for words.

"Bridget, I am so sorry, I caught you at a bad time, I'll just go…" He turned around and started to leave, and ran right into Carmen, who had been standing behind him with a 'what the heck?' look on her face. "Sorry," he mumbled, and walked around her.

It took Bridget awhile to find the word she was looking for, but she found it, and said, "Wait." It was quiet, but in the silent house, that didn't matter.

Eric turned around, the look of someone who knew they were about to get slapped on his face.

"Eric…" Bridget said again. Was that all her vocabulary had come to? "We need to talk somewhere private." She gave her friends a look saying, 'Get out now.' They hurried up the stairs to her bedroom, all glancing back at Eric and Bee as they went.

Eric looked at her, still expecting to be hurt. Bee didn't move, didn't make any sign that she would continue the conversation from there. Eric's eyes drifted to her stomach – she thought he was looking at her boobs for a minute, and wondered if he was still the same Eric she knew – but then she remembered.

"It's only been 4 months," she explained. "You'll be able to tell soon."

"Ah," Eric replied. He seemed like he wanted to say more, but he didn't.

The silence floated around them until Bridget batted it away with, "What are you doing here?" It sounded rude, she knew, but maybe that was the point.

"I had to see you, Bee." He called her Bee. Bridget wanted to hug him, but she wanted to punch him, too. "I had to…I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, this morning I woke up and…got on a plane. And now I'm here."

"Why?" Bridget asked. Even though she knew he didn't know.

"I think it's…the first semester just ended. And I'm thinking about maybe transferring. To...um…to a college…nearer…" He was looking down at his feet, playing with his thumbs.

"Nearer to here?" Bridget offered.

"Yeah." Eric nodded, as though the word yeah wasn't enough. Maybe it wasn't.

"No, you're going back to where you came from. I asked you not to come, Eric," Bridget said, scolded, and she felt like a mother.

"I didn't listen, did I?" Eric shot back. "Did you ever listen to me? Just once, Bee, I want you to listen to me, okay? I meant every single word I said at the end of last summer. And I still mean those words, maybe their meaning has changed, but I really need to be here right now. I still think you're too young. You're sixteen, and I'm 19. That's three years – three really important years – we have between us, Bridget." He was back to calling her Bridget. "So I don't want to fall in love with you again. I want you to understand that I can't have that now, not with you. Things are too complicated. Please know that I'm here because I have to be, because I need to see that baby be born and grow and…I need to pick out names with you, I need to help you paint the nursery. When I got your letter, I knew I would come. And now I'm here and, Bee, I'm not leaving."

Bridget tried to blink back the tears. She'd known all of this. She'd seen it in his face through Tibby's camera, and she was again possessed with the idea – the insane idea, the idea that had ended her life as she knew it once and would do it again if given the chance – that she couldn't have him.


	4. Chapter 5

**I honestly can say that reviews make me write more. When I don't get any reviews, I get bored and don't write. Just sayin'.**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 5

Lena looked at Bridget over her coffee cup. Bridget sighed and fidgeted with her oreo. She had no intention of eating it. It was merely for show. Lena continued to stare, and Bridget finally looked Lena in the eye.

"What do you expect me to do, Lenny?" she asked defensively.

"I expect you to not kick him out of your house," Lena said quietly, speaking volumes.

"Lena. He said…Well, I told him not to come," Bridget said, ignoring her heart that ached whenever she thought about what she'd done the night before. They were at the Coffee House on Main Street. School had just ended for winter break, and the next 16 days meant total freedom for everyone except Bridget. For her, they meant days of being unsure, of Eric, of her friends pressuring her to…Well, Tibby and Lena were for adoption, Carmen was for getting an apartment with Eric and raising the baby together. Carmen had strange ideas about what was awkward and what wasn't.

"But did you see how hurt he was? Did you care?" Lena prompted.

Yes.

"No, I didn't care. Because he's…I told him not to come, okay?" And with that, she dropped her oreo into Lena's coffee cup, stood up, and walked away.

Bridget was a bad person. Bridget was the worst of the worst. She didn't have emotions anymore. She didn't see other people's emotions. She was a creature. She didn't need people, and people didn't need her. She was all alone now, surrounded by people she couldn't fit in with. She was strange. Different. Weird. Too brutal. Dishonest. Her pillow was wet. It was too cold. She was shivering. Bridget hated shivering. She hated being cold.

Bridget sat on her bed, not sure what to do with herself. It was only 5 o'clock. Too early for her dad to be home. Carmen and Tibby were off with their families for the next three days for Christmas celebrations. They'd be back the day after Christmas. Lena was obviously not an option, but not because of Lena. She wasn't an option because of Bridget's own shame. Perry was shut up in his room. And he wouldn't want to do anything Bridget would want to do, anyway. Plus, Bridget didn't want to do anything.

So the only option was Eric.

That or wallow in her misery some more.

So Bridget picked up the phone. She dialed Eric's cell phone number, which he'd given her before she kicked him out the night before. She'd told him to scram after he said he wasn't leaving, and he said, "If you need me, I'll be here." And he'd given her his number. And she'd almost kicked his butt as he went out the door. But she didn't. She still had some dignity left.

"Bee," Eric said when he answered the phone on the second ring. "You okay?"

"Yes. I'm bored out of my mind," Bridget said, swallowing her pride and diving right in. Suddenly, she really wanted donuts. "Care to go for donuts?"

"Sure. I'll pick you up," Eric said. "Give me fifteen minutes, though. I have to put on pants."

Bridget really wished he hadn't told her he wasn't wearing pants, because, even though she knew it was supposed to be funny, it kind of gave her an achy feeling that she didn't like.

That feeling was gone fifteen minutes later when Eric showed up at her door in jeans and a blazer.

"Eric. You are going to get pneumonia or something out here if you just wear that!" Bridget exclaimed. She couldn't help being a tad bit concerned about him.

"I know, so don't make me wait too long." She hustled to the car in her big furry red jacket.

"Don't you have a heavier one?" she asked.

"Why would I need one in California?" he replied. "I'll get around to getting one. This morning I got a job, though."

Leave it to Eric to come into town and get a job the next day.

"That's cool," Bridget said. "Where?"

"That hardware store over in…that direction." He gestured with a hand to the left, and Bridget nodded. She had no idea there was a hardware store there, but she took his word for it.

They didn't speak much on the way to Dunkin' Donuts, but once she'd gotten her chocolate glazed donut and he had his sugar-coated donut and they were seated at a table next to the window, he started asking her questions.

"So when did you find out?" he asked.

"Beginning of September," she replied.

He nodded. "How has it been?"

"I'm actually really lucky," she said. She took a bite of her donut, chewed, and swallowed before continuing. "I didn't have morning sickness. That was great. But of course there's the mood swings and crap like that to deal with. It was also hard at school."

Eric took a bite of his donut and nodded understandingly, even though he didn't really understand what being pregnant was like. "But you've survived."

"I guess," Bridget said, shrugging. She fingered a strand of her hair, and he gazed at it between her thumb and forefinger.

"You guess? What happened to the Bee I knew?" he asked. "You were always so…happy-go-lucky. Like one of those clowns that you bat down and it pops back up."

Bridget thought for a minute before opening her mouth. "When I was little," she said, "I had one of those. I kept batting it down, and it would pop back up, but then it got too close to the edge of the table and it fell off on its head and cracked." There was silence as she let Eric soak that in.

He looked down guiltily. "Then I guess we'll just have to pick it back up again, then, huh?"

"Yeah. I guess." Bee smiled. If he understood her clown analogies, she guessed she might just need him to help her understand them.

"So what about you?" Bridget asked him.

"Oh, I've been…you know, playing soccer. Studying. Stuff." He looked like maybe he was hiding something. Bridget wondered at this. What would he not tell her?

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she asked. If that wasn't it, she _really_ didn't know what it was.

"Oh. Uh, no. Not right now." He looked down at the table. "So, um, anyone you want me to beat up for you?"

Bridget made a mental note to find out what he was hiding. "No, I'm a big girl. I can handle myself." She stuck out her chest in pride. He looked up at her with marveling eyes, but quickly looked back down, ashamed.

"What about your friends?" Eric asked. Bridget had told him about Carmen, Lena, and Tibby once in passing. "Carmen, Lena, and…Tibby?"

Bridget looked at him in awe. He remembered their names after all this time. She must've told him that in July. It had been awhile. Either he had a great memory or…

_No, _she told herself, _he has a great memory._

"They're fine." And for some reason, she spilled out with, "Lena and I kind of had a big fight. About an hour ago. Or so."

"Oh?" Eric asked. "What about?"

Bridget looked out the big window next to her, past the DUNKIN' DONUTS FREE ICED COFFEE WITH A PURCHASE OF 20 POP'EMS sign, and saw that it was flurrying.

"White Christmas," she commented, ignoring his question.

He let it go. "I'm dreaming…" he sang. He really wasn't a very good singer. Bridget smiled. She liked that. Neither was she. But she joined in anyway, and they sang the chorus, because that was all either of them knew. For a minute, Bridget forgot she was pregnant. She forgot she wasn't innocent. She forgot about her fight with Lena, and Carmen and Tibby being away. She smiled. Eric smiled.

Was this perfect, or was it just really nice?


	5. Chapter 6

**Welcome, welcome, to another chapter of Mistakes Already Made! Wee! Sorry for the rapid-fire updates. … Wait, why am I apologizing? I love when authors do that…3**

**The beginning is an excerpt from ****The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants**** by Ann Brashares, page 264-265.**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 6

"_Bee, listen. Someday, when you're twenty, maybe, I'll see you again. You'll be this hot soccer star at some great school, with a million guys more interesting than I am chasing you down. And you know what? I'll see you and I'll pray you want me still. If I could meet you again, at a different time under different circumstances, I could let myself worship you the way you deserve. But I can't now."_

Bridget sighed. She opened up her drawer and took out a marker. She drew a little heart on her knee, then scribbled it out quickly. She felt weird about this whole thing. She needed her friends. But she'd blown it with Lena, hadn't she? And Carmen and Tibby's cell phones were off.

Bridget watched as the clock ticked from 11:59 to 12:00. She liked 12:00 midnight. She could never decide if it was the next day yet, or if it was still the day that had already happened. So she decided it was no-man's-land. For one minute, the world hung in midair, in suspense, waiting for the next day. But Bridget didn't wait. She always felt a sadness when 12:01 came around. This time, though, when 12:01 would come, it would be Christmas Eve. Bridget wasn't as excited about that prospect as some.

Christmas was a weird day for Bridget. It was supposed to be a day of family. It was supposed to be happy, getting presents and eating and being with people you loved. But her friends were always with their families, and Bridget, her dad, and Perry would open presents awkwardly before heading their separate ways. In the afternoon, Bridget would go to one of her friends' houses for Christmas dinner. She'd been invited to the Kaligarises for the next day, but she didn't know if she was still invited, and besides, right now she didn't like Greek food.

It was only Christmas Eve, but that was kind of a family thing too. Maybe not during the day, but at night, when families all went to church together.

Bridget thought about Eric. He was alone in his hotel room. He didn't start work until January 2nd, so she knew he would spend the day there unless invited to her house. But what would they do all day? Maybe they could go to the movies. Would that seem like a date?

Maybe she'd see if he had any ideas. She felt like she had to initiate these things, because he still wasn't sure if she even wanted him here yet. She wasn't sure, either, but as long as he was, she didn't want him to feel alone.

She decided to sleep on it. She was tired. So she laid down and stared at the ceiling until she fell asleep. When she woke up, she had an idea.

She knew it would be awkward. But maybe it would be fun. Maybe. And Eric was a personable person. So he would be able to handle it. And anything was better than a hotel room, right?

So Bridget called Eric as soon as it got late enough to not be rude. He sounded like he'd just woken up, but he tried to hide it.

"Bee!" he exclaimed once he found his surroundings. "Hey."

"Hey. Um, listen. Remember how I told you…Oh, wait. I didn't tell you a thing about my family, did I?" She laughed a shallow little laugh that probably sounded bitter rather than laugh-like. "Okay, well, my mom's dead, you knew that, and my dad and my twin brother-"

"You have a twin brother?"

"Yeah, his name's Perry. And anyway, Perry and my dad are always sort of…well, they don't really do family things with me. So I thought maybe you could come in and…sort of…well…um…do family things with us." It was an awful way of pitching her idea. He'd probably think it sounded lame, anyway.

"That sounds really fun!" Eric sounded actually enthusiastic. "What time do you want me to come over?"

"Uh…Well, my dad's up, and so am I, and we can get Perry up, so how about in a half hour? We can eat breakfast when you get here." Bridget felt excited despite herself.

"Sounds great," Eric said. "See you in a half hour."

Her dad was angry when Bridget told him Eric was coming over.

"He's in town, Dad," she said. "I can't really explain why, it's really complicated, but he's here, and he probably has nothing to do for Christmas Eve. So I invited him over for family things."

"Family things?" her dad rumbled. "Family things? He isn't part of the family."

Bridget didn't like how this was going. "Well, no, but he'll be around a lot, and I think you'll like him." She hoped he would, anyway. "Please, just give it a chance. You don't have to spend the whole day with us or anything. It would just mean a lot to me." Her eyes started to water as she pictured what it would be like if she and Eric were forced to spent 'family day' alone.

Her dad saw, so he made scrambled eggs and pancakes and bacon (extra for Bridget) and got out some of the dusty games from the basement and classic movies like _It's a Wonderful Life_ and _A Christmas Story._

Bridget woke Perry up and told him that Eric was coming over and would he like to play family games and watch movies with them? He nodded gamely for her sake, because he could tell she was excited about the family prospect, and agreed to be dressed and downstairs in 10 minutes.

10 minutes later, Eric was standing at the front door, snowy and freezing-looking in his blazer.

"Eric! I told you to get a real coat!" Bridget scolded.

"When would I have had time?" he asked, and she shrugged. "Hello, Mr. Vreeland, I'm Eric Richman." Eric held out his hand, and Bridget loved that. Her dad took it hesitantly.

"Nice to meet you," her dad said stiffly.

If Eric noticed, he made no sign.

"I'm sorry for coming over on such short notice. But it's nice to be in a real home for Christmas Eve rather than a hotel room, right?" He shook his coat off outside before closing the door. Bridget took it from him and hung it on the rack.

Her father didn't respond, just turned around to check on the eggs.

"I'm sorry," Bridget whispered. "He might loosen up later."

"It's fine," Eric responded. "I really am just glad to have something to do."

Perry arrived on the scene at that moment, and eyed Eric up and down silently.

"Hey, you must be Perry!" Eric exclaimed. "I've wanted to meet you so badly. Bridget's twin, huh?"

The corners of Perry's mouth moved up infinitesimally, but that was enough to make Bridget full-on grin.

"Yeah. I hear that a lot," he said.

"You're lucky to have a sister like her," Eric said. "She's smart, talented, and plays the best soccer game of any sixteen year old I've ever met."

Bridget blushed. Perry blushed.

"You two look alike," Eric commented. Bridget was glad he noticed. Usually the comment was, 'You two look nothing alike.' And they really didn't look anything alike, but it was a nice thing to say.

"Thanks," Perry and Bridget said in unison. They both smiled at that. Bridget hadn't seen Perry actually smile in a long time. She liked it.

"Breakfast's ready," her dad called. They hurried into the kitchen, anxious to eat.

Breakfast was an interesting affair. A little bit awkward, but that was really only Bridget's dad's fault. Perry liked Eric, Bridget could tell. She could also tell her dad was a little unsure of Eric.

Eric, bless his heart, was very friendly to her dad, though. Sometimes people excluded him from the conversation just because he made it awkward, or he didn't always respond in more than one word. But Eric didn't seem to mind at all.

At one point, Eric asked what sports Bee's dad liked, and that conversation lasted about five minutes. Bridget could tell that maybe the day wouldn't be so bad, after all.

The doorbell rang as Bridget was finishing up her fourth pancake, and she got up to get it.

It was Lena. Bridget just stood at the door awkwardly, not sure what Lena would do. Lena wasn't one for confrontation, but Bridget had no idea if Lena wanted something specific or if she was here to forgive Bee.

Lena wrapped her in a hug before Bridget could do anything about it, and Bridget hugged back. She invited Lena in to play games, and Lena accepted. She came in, introduced herself to Eric, who seemed genuinely pleased to see Lena. Lena seemed genuinely pleased to see Eric, too. Bridget could imagine Lena's thoughts right now, and it made her smile. Lena was probably thinking about how cute Eric was, slapping herself because she had Kostos and because Bridget had the guy's baby inside her at this very moment.

"What should we play first?" Bridget asked, and Perry suggested Apples to Apples. Everyone knew how to play that game, and Lena wound up winning, just because everyone felt sorry for her that she didn't have any cards halfway through, so they all started picking her card.

It reminded Bridget of one of those commercials as she watched her family and friends settle into one another and loosen up. There were tensions, of course, but Bridget thought maybe there would always be tensions. People laughed and made jokes, and it amazed Bridget that her brother and dad were actually playing a game with her and her friends. She had decided to call Eric a friend for lack of a better term, although it didn't really seem to fit. It was like a poorly made puzzle piece – you figured that was where it was supposed to go, but it didn't quite fit there.

After Apples to Apples, they watched _A Christmas Story,_ saving _It's a Wonderful Life_ for later that night. They played half a game of Monopoly before lunch time, when they decided to order a pizza. It was amazing to Bridget, watching her dad call the pizza place and order a pizza. It occurred to her that she'd never seen him do that. It was just one of those things he didn't find acceptable. It was usually either she called to order the pizza, or he told her that he didn't like pizza, even though she knew he did.

They ate the pizza while they watched _Elf_, which Lena had brought over. Everyone laughed in the right places, and it was so beautiful that Bridget almost cried. Eric was sitting on one side of her on the couch, Lena was at her feet, and Perry was on her other side. Her dad was in the armchair next to the couch. Bridget was careful not to let her leg touch Eric's at first, but after awhile, it just kind of happened that Bridget's leg drifted toward his, and his leg drifted toward hers, and they were touching by the time Buddy was in New York.

They didn't finish the Monopoly game; instead they went outside and built a huge snow fort. Her dad stayed inside for that, because he'd let Eric borrow his coat (Bridget nearly squealed at that). The snow fort ended up collapsing, but by that time they were all ready to go inside, anyway. It was about 5PM then, and they decided it was time to kindle up a fire and make s'mores. Bridget ate five, including one Eric had made but hadn't burnt enough (he didn't eat them unless they were completely burnt) so he gave to Bee. Bee thought it was the best Christmas present she'd ever received at the time, but then she remembered the soccer ball signed by all her favorite players that she'd gotten the year before from Lena, Tibby, and Carmen.

They watched _It's a Wonderful Life_ to round out the evening and, as cheesy as it was, Bridget decided that her life was a wonderful life, right then, surrounded by people she loved and who loved her. Or didn't love her, in Eric's case. Or maybe loved her? She didn't know, but she decided that, in that moment, he was at her house, doing cheesy family things with her broken, dysfunctional family, so he must love her at least a little bit.


	6. Chapter 7

**Lovely day, guys, lovely day. But I didn't get much of a chance to write until now, so I'm going to write at this time. Enjoy. **

**P.S. I hope you enjoyed the sappiness of the last chapter, and the length. It was a present. I worked hard on it. Haha 3**

**P.P.S. THANK YOU to those who commented. I really appreciate it! 333**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 7

January 23rd: Bridget, Eric, Carmen, Lena, and Tibby were too numerous. They all looked at each other as the mini golf person looked at them. Bridget looked down at her stomach, now protruding enough that you could tell she was pregnant. She felt self-conscious about it, but not enough to not hang out with her friends in public places.

"What if I told you," Tibby began, and Carmen, Bee, and Lena all mentally facepalmed. Here she went. "That I am a professional mini-golfer." Tibby began to list her many trophies for mini-golfing. Everyone who knew Tibby knew she was a horrible mini-golfer. She was quite infamous for it in her circle of friends, and that made them all double over with laughter watching her as she explained the perfect shot. The attendant looked bored, so finally just told them to go through anyway.

"Thanks, Tib," Carmen said. "I needed a good laugh."

It was weird to go mini-golfing in January, they were well aware, and they were the only ones with that idea that Saturday. They each had their hats and gloves and heavy coats on. Bridget had had to buy a new coat, so she and Carmen went out the night before to the store and bought a bigger one that also happened to be fluffier and warmer.

They began putting. They could see their breath, but none of them cared. The ponds were almost frozen over, with little chunks of thin ice floating in them. Bridget kicked one with her toe, laughing for no reason. She looked up at the cloudless sky, and laughed again. Carmen, Lena, and Tibby were arguing over whether Tibby had had six strokes or five. Eric was standing next to Bridget at the tiny pond, watching her as she laughed. She didn't see him reach over to touch her hair, and when she felt the little tug, she glanced toward him.

"Oh, is there something stuck in it?" she asked. She pulled it out of his hand and examined it. "Oh. Looks like you got it." She smiled thankfully at him and went over to be peacemaker with her friends.

Eric stared after her. As she began to explain that you had to stop at six strokes, and how Tibby's ball wasn't in yet, therefore it didn't matter if Tibby had six strokes or five, because she wouldn't get it in in one stroke anyway, Eric marveled. He knew he must look pretty stupid, standing there staring at a pregnant sixteen year old like she was some goddess, but he didn't care. Who was there to see him?

The last month, he'd been on Cloud 9, as opposed to where he'd been during the first semester of school at Columbia. He remembered his coach yelling at him, much like Bridget's coach had yelled at her during the championship game. He felt a stab of remorse, knowing they both could have avoided this.

He suspected Bridget felt more than she cared to show for him, simply because of how she'd acted the past summer. He knew that wasn't who she was, exactly, and he was finding that she contained multitudes. As Bridget came back over to him, he looked at her like he was a friend. She looked at him like he was a friend. They were two friends. Complicated things had happened to them, but that didn't mean they couldn't act like nothing had happened.

Bridget took one look at Eric and knew what he was thinking. He was thinking she was a good friend. He was wondering why he'd ever thought she was more than that. Bridget looked back at him as if she thought the same thing. She didn't want to, but what would happen if she told him how she really felt? She didn't need to complicate her life like that. It was already too complicated for her taste.

They finished up their mini-golf game and rounded it out with a trip to the doctors'. Bridget had to get an ultrasound today, and since they were already out, they all decided to go in. The doctor did his thing, and went outside to check out the pictures and make sure the baby was okay. Tibby squeezed Bridget's hand, excited.

"This is when he tells you if it's a boy or girl!" she exclaimed, almost bursting.

"Do we want to know?" Bee asked her friends, but mostly Eric. Eric looked up at her from where he'd been gazing at her growing stomach.

"Do we want to know if it's a boy or girl? Oh, I don't know. Why not?" He shrugged. "That way we can pick out names and stuff."

"That sounds good," Bridget said, and then she felt the baby kick. It wasn't the first time, it had happened quite a few times. Whatever was in there was certainly going to be an active kid. "Oh! Come feel! Quick!" Her friends all gathered around and she placed their hands, one by one, on her stomach. Only Eric got to feel it, the rest couldn't get the baby to kick. But Eric looked up at her and then down at her stomach like he couldn't be happier.

Bridget was glad.

"Alright, Bridget, Eric. Would you like to know what your baby is?" The doctor asked as he strode in.

"Yes," they said in unison.

"Your little boy is very healthy," said the doctor.

Bridget beamed. Eric beamed. And then, suddenly, he hugged her. Not too tight, very gently, but it wasn't exactly a friendship kind of hug. Bridget liked it. She hugged back.

"A boy," Eric whispered in her ear. "That's what I thought it would be."

"Me, too," Bridget breathed.

Tibby cleared her throat loudly.

"Oh. Thank you. Is there anything we need to know?" Bridget asked.

"Nope, just keep on keepin' on," the doctor said, looking mildly uncomfortable. "Any questions?"

"Nope."

"Alright then, see you next time." The doctor smiled and booked it out of there. Bridget gave a 'don't say anything' smile to her friends, knowing full-well there would be a sleepover later in which the hug would be picked apart until it wasn't special anymore. But that was just the way things were. For right now, Bridget was just happy she had a baby boy inside her.

"Bee, you are insane in love," said Lena as she dragged Bridget up the stairs to her room. It was quiet on the Kaligaris front, but Bridget knew that if Lena talked any louder, Effie would hear and come squealing in. Because Effie never just 'came in.'

"I am not in love," Bridget hissed, wiggling free from Lena's grasp. Carmen and Tibby were right behind her, though, so she had no route of escape.

"Bridget, you are so completely in love you don't even know it," Carmen said, before breaking into something Spanish.

"I am not in love," Bridget said, absently rubbing her stomach.

"Come on, Bee," Lena said, rubbing Bridget's arm. "You can admit it to us."

The three of them looked at her and didn't move for about a minute, and finally the silence was more than Bridget could bear.

"Okay. Maybe I am in love. Maybe if I was, it would be completely wrong and irreversibly horrible. Maybe the guy I 'love' doesn't 'love' me back. Maybe I'm not fit for love because right now I really can't see what happened last summer happening again. So get off my case about whether I do or don't love him, because I don't even know." She turned around so her friends couldn't see the tears suddenly welling in her eyes.

"Bridget, you haven't seen the way that boy looks at you," Tibby said slowly, not really wanting to speak but feeling like she had to.

"Really?" Bridget asked, ashamed for being interested, but being interested all the same.

"Yeah." Tibby gave her an encouraging smile. "Yeah," she repeated. "He really does like you."

Bridget couldn't help smiling to herself. That was nice to hear. But was it true? Was it real? Could her friends know?

"Hey, if you don't believe us, how about you ask him?" Carmen asked, breaking out of her Spanish rant. "Call him."

"No!" Bridget exclaimed. "I'm not going to call Eric!"

"Why not?" asked a voice from behind them. Effie.

"Because," Bridget said, turning around. "Because it's stupid. He's probably asleep."

"He's not asleep," Effie replied calmly. "You love him."

"Yeah. I know. We already discussed that," Bridget said.

"What? You're admitting it for real, instead of that 'well maybe' crap?" Tibby asked, but then covered her mouth with her hand, because even she realized that was tactless.

"Yeah. I'm admitting it for real," Bee said, not noticing what Tibby had said. "I'm admitting it."

"So then why don't you want to tell him?" Effie asked reasonably.

"Because, Eff. It's too complicated. Listen, guys. I have his baby inside me right now, and that was because I was reckless and too OPEN. I don't want to be that again. I don't want to crash and burn again like...like I did before. Okay? I have to be closed with my emotions now." This came out raw, as if she were writing in a diary or something rather than talking to Effie Kaligaris and Lena and Carmen and Tibby, who would understand but tell her it made no sense. She knew it made no sense. That was why it bothered her. It bothered her that she listened to it. It wasn't logic - not real logic. It was complete crap.

"That's bull," said Effie. "That's total bull. Bridget, your entire life you've been open, and that guy," she pointed out the door, "loves you, and you love him, and now you're telling me you're AFRAID...Bridget Vreeland is afraid, this is what you expect me to believe. You know what I think, Bridget?"

"What do you think?" Bridget asked wearily.

"I think. That you need to swallow your pride and talk to him."

"Pride?"

Was that the problem?

"Yes. Pride. Bridget, I know maybe you're a little bit afraid, yeah, I am too, because you're afraid of telling someone how you feel. But that makes no sense." Effie put her hand on her hip. "It makes no sense to be afraid of someone you love."

"I'm not afraid," Bridget said.

"No, you aren't."

"Wait. No, I think I am."

Bridget was all mixed up now. Was she or wasn't she afraid?

"You know what else?" Effie asked. "You know what else is going on?"

"Effie, are you certified for this...?" Bridget asked.

"No. Not at all. You know what else?"

"What else?"

"You're weirded out about being yourself. How you used to be. You used to be this little fireball who ran around and didn't protect her emotions."

This made no sense to Bridget. She thought she was afraid.

"Bridget, you don't feel like being who you used to be, but Bridget, that's who you are. You need to be who you are. Sure, tone it down a little bit. Whatever. But please. Don't say you're afraid."


	7. Chapter 8

**I liked Eric's point of view. It was fun to write. So here's some more of it. Because I can do whatever I want to do.**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 8

Cars whizzed past outside Eric's window. He sighed and picked up his cell phone, which had been buzzing on and off for the past five minutes. It was another text from Alison.

"Ali, stop texting me," Eric said aloud to the phone. He hadn't responded to any of them, and he didn't plan to.

It worked. Ali stopped texting. Instead, his phone started ringing. She was calling. Eric knew she would continue to call until he picked up the phone.

"Eric Richman!" Alison yelled. "You have not returned my calls or texts for a month!"

If he was lucky, he wouldn't have to say anything and she would just break up with him and then hang up.

Unfortunately, Alison expected a response. "I haven't had time, Ali. Like I said, Grandma is really sick, and she needs me to do a ton of errands. And when I'm not doing errands for her, she needs me to read to her, or something else." He knew this wasn't the Eric Alison knew. AlisAlon knew an Eric that complained about things that were happy, got upset easily, was mad all the time… He had a feeling that was why she liked him. She was the same way.

"Eric, you and I know that's complete bullshit."

Eric laid on his back on the floor. His room had cheetos scattered everywhere, and there was a dirty pair of pants inches from his face. He sighed.

"Alison, I don't know what to do, alright? Something came up, okay?" He didn't know why he felt like he was asking her permission, especially not for this. He knew that for this, he needed only one person's opinion, and that person sported a head full of banana-colored hair and had a fiery attitude that only showed itself sometimes nowadays. He knew that he needed to dump Alison, but that wasn't the kind of person Eric was.

He remembered when he'd met Alison. He was in a bar the night he'd received Bridget's letter. It had been the third day of classes, and a girl he recognized from his astronomy class sidled up to him and without warning kissed him. It was just what he'd thought he needed at the time.

However, as time went on, and he refused to sleep with her, he had to wonder why. He wanted a distraction from thoughts of Bee, but he also didn't want to lose her memory by erasing it with someone else. So he resisted Alison in this one department, but this one department only. He found other ways of keeping himself occupied, by drinking and making up a fantasy background for himself to feed Alison so he didn't have to tell her about Bridget. This fantasy Eric didn't play soccer.

This fantasy Eric also had a sick grandmother that he had to take care of in Washington, D.C. Fantasy Eric had complained about it as much as possible, but now, he couldn't bring himself to complain about a grandmother that didn't exist. But he also couldn't bring himself to dump her over the phone, and since he couldn't do that, he couldn't do it until he got back to Columbia in the fall. If he got back to Columbia in the fall.

"No, Eric…" Alison got a tone in her voice that Eric didn't like. "We have a long-weekend next weekend. I'm coming. Meet me at the airport at 5:20 on Friday."

Eric didn't agree, because Alison didn't give him a chance. She hung up the phone.

Eric smiled for some reason, because frowning seemed too depressing. Great. So his girlfriend would meet his…would meet Bridget. And she'd find out.

But worse was the fact that Bridget would find out about Alison. It made Eric's heart hurt when he thought about it.

His phone rang again. The same phone he'd just talked to Alison on. Eric flipped it open and put it to his ear. "Hello?"

It was Bridget. "Hello," Bridget said. She sounded a little weird, like she'd written a script. "Eric, I have to tell you something."

"Oh, uh, Bridget. I have to tell you something, too." Eric didn't want to hear whatever she was going to say because he knew it would change things. And he wanted things to stay exactly the same.

"So meet me at Lena's house, will you?" Bridget asked. "We can tell each other things."

"Lena's house? Sure…" Eric felt a little uncomfortable going to Lena's house, because Lena's parents had a habit of either ignoring him or glaring at him. He knew it was because they were upset about what he'd obviously done with Bridget. He wondered why they didn't treat Bridget in the same way.

But Eric went. He went to Bridget's house because he was a good friend. That or he was a very, very bad one. He took his time in getting there, but eventually he had to arrive, so he rushed into Lena's house when he did, because it was cold out and he suspected he'd go back to the warmth of his hotel room if he didn't.

Bridget opened the door. "Eric," she started before she could stop herself, because she knew this might be awkward, "I want to know if you want to come live at my house. My dad said you could, and Perry said it would be okay, and there's no way the hotel is inexpensive."

"It's not too bad," Eric said quickly, but then he realized what she was asking. And what she meant. And how heavy it was. "But that sounds really nice. I could stay in your guest room?"

"Yeah." Bridget was smiling. "And we need a boy's name."

Eric couldn't help grinning at that. He would have a son. He felt like hugging Bridget again.

"Yeah. We do." And with that, he forgot about telling Bridget about Alison. He decided it would have to work itself out.

"So when do you want to move in?" Bridget asked.

"Check out at the hotel is at 11AM, so I can check out there and be at your house around 11:15 with all my stuff," Eric offered. "Does that sound okay?"

"That sounds great," Bridget said, and it did. It sounded absolutely wonderful to her, right there, in that moment. And it was. There were pros – living in the same house as Eric, waking up and seeing him, seeing him right before going to bed, eating all the meals with him, doing things with him… But the main con was awkwardness. The guest room was just through the wall from hers. She knew there would be only feet between her head and his. And other…parts of them. Would be right next to each other, theoretically.

But that wasn't really too bad, was it? There was a wall there, right? How thick _were_ walls, anyway?

_Flashback:_

_Eric opened up the envelope, grinning at his roommate, wondering who the letter was from but knowing it was probably just a friend from camp or high school or something. He liked the handwriting, though._

_There was another idea in the back of his head, and he really hoped it was from her, but he mentally slapped himself. _Get ahold of yourself, Eric. She's 15. Too young for what you did. Too young for you. You're too old. It was just one night of irresponsibility. … No, _he corrected himself. _It was a summer of irresponsibility. _It was sad that he was still thinking about her. He tried to focus instead on the letter._

_Dear Eric,_

_I'm pregnant. I thought you should know. You don't have to do anything. Just know about it, okay? I don't want you to come here. I don't want you to call. Please don't do anything about it. Please. I have lots of support here. You would just ruin it all. Don't come._

_Sincerely,_

_Bridget_

_It was less than 60 words. With less than 60 words, Eric felt his life unraveling before him. With less than 60 words, he saw images from the summer rolling by, ending with the climax of that night on the beach. In the dark, he'd felt Bridget, really _felt _her – who she was, how she was. And he'd __felt more than he ever had, and it broke his heart even then. He'd realized the significance, but it was a different significance than it was now. Now, the significance had nothing to do with him._

_Eric looked up at his roommate and felt a surge of anger – not for the poor unsuspecting boy standing before him, but for himself, for Bridget, for himself again. How could he have been so irresponsible? He had removed his life and the life of a 15-year-old girl with one simple night. He could have stayed in the cabin when he saw her pass. He _should_ have stayed. But he didn't, and he was the stupidest person he'd ever met._

"_Get out. Now," he growled, feeling like the rotten person he was._

_His poor roommate fumbled his way out the door quickly, and Eric crumbled up the letter, threw it toward the trash can, but it didn't go in, It bounced off and hit his bed. He looked at his bed and grabbed the pillow. He pushed it up against his mouth and, not thinking logical thoughts at all, screamed. It made a muffled sound, and no matter how hard he screamed, he still had more scream in him. He thought he might always have scream in him. He thought he deserved it._

**Review for me, please! I want to know what you like, what you don't like, and what you need clarified. This makes sense in my head, but so do a lot of things that are illogical to most people, so please let me know if you're confused or think something's out of character, because, heck, it might be. Together, we can make a difference. ;) Review vv**


	8. Chapter 9

**Okay, guys. This is IMPORTANT. So last night I realized I made a huge oopsies in chapter FOUR. At the end, it ended with 'And then Eric's face as he entered the room. Everyone froze. Tibby almost dropped the camera, and Bee almost dropped the oreo and celery sandwich she was eating.' HOWEVER. I had actually written a ton more after that, but screwed up and forgot to save that and so the most important part didn't show up.**

**SO either go back and read it in chapter 4 because I edited it into that chapter, or read it conveniently here:**

"Eric?" Bridget said, slightly stunned, slightly angry, slightly glad. Very much at a loss for words.

"Bridget, I am so sorry, I caught you at a bad time, I'll just go…" He turned around and started to leave, and ran right into Carmen, who had been standing behind him with a 'what the heck?' look on her face. "Sorry," he mumbled, and walked around her.

It took Bridget awhile to find the word she was looking for, but she found it, and said, "Wait." It was quiet, but in the silent house, that didn't matter.

Eric turned around, the look of someone who knew they were about to get slapped on his face.

"Eric…" Bridget said again. Was that all her vocabulary had come to? "We need to talk somewhere private." She gave her friends a look saying, 'Get out now.' They hurried up the stairs to her bedroom, all glancing back at Eric and Bee as they went.

Eric looked at her, still expecting to be hurt. Bee didn't move, didn't make any sign that she would continue the conversation from there. Eric's eyes drifted to her stomach – she thought he was looking at her boobs for a minute, and wondered if he was still the same Eric she knew – but then she remembered.

"It's only been 4 months," she explained. "You'll be able to tell soon."

"Ah," Eric replied. He seemed like he wanted to say more, but he didn't.

The silence floated around them until Bridget batted it away with, "What are you doing here?" It sounded rude, she knew, but maybe that was the point.

"I had to see you, Bee." He called her Bee. Bridget wanted to hug him, but she wanted to punch him, too. "I had to…I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, this morning I woke up and…got on a plane. And now I'm here."

"Why?" Bridget asked. Even though she knew he didn't know.

"I think it's…the first semester just ended. And I'm thinking about maybe transferring. To...um…to George Washington University." He was looking down at his feet, playing with his thumbs.

"That's close by," Bridget offered.

"Yeah." Eric nodded, as though the word yeah wasn't enough. Maybe it wasn't.

"No, you're going back to New York. I asked you not to come, Eric," Bridget said, scolded, and she felt like a mother.

"I didn't listen, did I?" Eric shot back. "Did you ever listen to me? Just once, Bee, I want you to listen to me, okay? I meant every single word I said at the end of last summer. And I still mean those words, maybe their meaning has changed, but I really need to be here right now. I still think you're too young. You're sixteen, and I'm 19. That's three years – three really important years – we have between us, Bridget." He was back to calling her Bridget. "So I don't want to fall in love with you again. I want you to understand that I can't have that now, not with you. Things are too complicated. Please know that I'm here because I have to be, because I need to see that baby be born and grow and…I need to pick out names with you, I need to help you paint the nursery. When I got your letter, I knew I would come. And now I'm here and, Bee, I'm not leaving."

Bridget tried to blink back the tears. She'd known all of this. She'd seen it in his face through Tibby's camera, and she was again possessed with the idea – the insane idea, the idea that had ended her life as she knew it once and would do it again if given the chance – that she couldn't have him.

**So, gosh, I'm really super sorry about that, it was extremely important to be in there, but it wasn't. **** So…Yeah. I'm sorry. Now everyone can move on with their lives, eh?**

**I also have to say - I've never been pregnant, I have nothing to base what pregnancy feels like on from personal experience, and Bridget strikes me as being a generally strong person anyway, so the reason I haven't been talking much about her pregnancy is because I'm just letting it be. That's not really the main part of the story, anyway – what being pregnant is like. So if you're looking for an in-depth description of pregnancy, don't read this story to find it. **

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 9

Bridget noticed the problem that night as she was brushing her teeth at the bathroom sink. She'd told her friends she wanted to get home to clean her room in case Eric saw it, and to prepare the guest room. But now she really just wanted to go to sleep, so she was standing at the sink brushing her teeth when she realized that she and Eric would be getting ready for bed at the same time, in the same bathroom. Should she let him go first? Should she not? It seemed weird that he would be waiting for her to finish if she went first, but would it be awkward for him if he went first?

Bridget shook her head. That would all work itself out. She didn't have to worry about it. They'd figure it out.

But it might be awkward.

And then Bridget considered all of her stuff lying out in the bathroom. There was her face wash, her razor, her deodorant, her hairbrush with little blonde hairs stuck to it, her shampoo, even her soap seemed vulnerable. Most of Bridget's things, like medicine, were in the cabinet above the sink, and now she took all the things that were "safe" with just Perry using the bathroom besides her, and put them all in the cupboard. It was jammed, but she managed to fit it all.

Next she checked the guest bedroom. There were pictures of Bridget when she was younger, and her parents and Perry. Bridget's eyes were always drawn to a picture of her mother. Her mother with a head full of The Hair. Her mother smiling and standing very firmly in the middle of a park. Her mother at Bridget's age. Her mother, with her flat stomach.

Bridget sighed, absently rubbing her stomach. It looked like the room was clear of things of Bridget's that she wouldn't want Eric to see. Next she checked the living room. The only things of hers in there were her iPod and a few of her books. All clear. As was the kitchen, dining room, and the downstairs bathroom.

Bridget went back to her room and sat down on the unmade bed. She wondered what it would be like to say good night to Eric every night, and then to say good morning to him every morning. She wondered what it would be like for him to see her in her pajamas, or if he was a morning person. Bridget realized, in that moment, that she knew virtually nothing personal about Eric at all. Well, except for maybe the most personal thing there was to know.

But that didn't seem like it counted, because that had been too weird to count as really knowing. To really know someone, Bridget thought, you had to know something _about_ them first. Important things were less important than the unimportant ones. The unimportant things were what really told you the full story.

There were a few main important things Bridget knew about Eric: She knew he loved soccer. She knew he was endlessly responsible, responsible to the point of recklessness, just as she had been singled-minded to the point of recklessness (and maybe still was). He was half-Mexican. He went to Columbia – or, he used to. He was honest.

But the more Bridget learned the little things, the more she knew who Eric was. She knew he was good at slicing tomatoes, and that told her he was careful. She always squirted them all over the place whenever she tried. She knew he had a fear of zip lines, which told her that somewhere along the line he'd acquired this fear by trying a zip line, or maybe trying to try a zip line. Bridget knew Eric laughed at jokes that weren't funny. This told her he had a sense of humor, but also that he was caring and would laugh when someone wanted him to. She knew he would buy lemonade whenever a little kid had a stand up, even if it was January. So either he liked homemade lemonade or he liked little kids. Or maybe he liked entrepreneurship.

All these little things told her more than the big things told her. The big things gave an outline. The little things filled in the empty space between the bold black lines.

Bridget longed for more. She longed for more little things. She yearned to know Eric, to know everything there was to know about him. She wondered if he took syrup on his waffles, or if he buttered his pancakes. She wanted to know if he twirled his spaghetti or just ate it like a dog.

Bridget couldn't help but smile at the knowledge that soon, she would be able to color in the picture created by the big things.

"Bee," Eric said warmly when she opened the door at 11:15 the next morning. He held a big duffel bag and was wearing a backpack on his back. Bridget smiled at him in agreement, her stomach churning from nervousness. She didn't even realize she was just standing there, not letting him in, until Perry came up behind her, out of his bedroom at last (she'd been trying to get him up all morning), and asked Eric if he would like to come in.

Bridget laughed stupidly. "Whoops. Sorry." He was watching her, even as Perry took his bag and started up the stairs with it. Bridget followed Perry, trying to shut up her mind. It was screaming at her that she should be talking, but she had nothing to say. Or maybe it was that she had everything to say, but none of it was monumental enough for this occasion.

It wasn't like they were moving in _together_. Her father had offered their home very graciously to him, Bridget's friend, who had just happened to impregnate her five months previously. That was a coincidence, though. It hadn't even been Bridget's idea, although she wished it had been.

"So this is the room, huh?" Eric asked. Eric, who had never set a foot on the stairs in Bridget's house. Bridget felt herself coloring for no apparent reason.

"Yep." Perry set Eric's bag on the bed and left the room wordlessly. Oh, well. Bridget could only ask so much. Besides, there was a tension between Bridget and Eric that Perry could probably feel and didn't want to get in the way of.

"It's really nice," Eric said, but Bridget knew it wasn't exactly 'nice.' It was neat was what it was. The walls were white, the bedspread was white, the carpet was beige, the bureau was a polished, dark wood, and there was a picture of –

_Oh, dear Jesus, please kill me now,_ Bridget prayed, hoping to be blasted off her feet into outer space for the rest of her existence.

Hopefully he hadn't noticed it yet. But there was a picture, a picture she somehow hadn't seen before because she'd been too busy looking at her mother's picture, of Bridget when she was three. Naked. In a big green bucket. Lena was off to the side in a pink bathing suit, and you could see Carmen's sneaker-clad foot in the background. The corner of Perry's swim trunks could even be seen. And Bridget had her naked hands raised over her naked head which lay on top of her naked body.

It was a huge picture. Her parents had gotten it blown up to hang on the wall because they thought it was just too adorable. Bridget had never been embarrassed by it because she'd never thought to be.

Except now she was thinking to be embarrassed by it. In all its glory, hanging on the wall, right in front of Eric's eyes – well, at least Eric wasn't looking at it. But he would notice it.

Eric wandered over to the closet and opened the door to put his backpack inside, and Bridget stood in the doorway staring at the picture. She knew she shouldn't be obvious about it, because that would call attention to her nakedness, but she really just wanted to take it under her arm and run.

She tried to calm down. She told herself that he wouldn't care. She had been three. All three year olds were like that. Carmen used to run naked around her house until she was about six. Lena had skinny-dipped in Greece just a few months ago, for crying out loud! So what was the problem with Bridget being naked in a bucket?

The problem was that it was right there for Eric to see when he woke up in the morning and before she went to bed at night. It had used to be in the living room, but Bridget's dad had moved it out of courtesy for her to the guest room. Right now, she wished he'd been a little more courteous and thrown it into a dumpster.

"Nice pictures," Eric commented, his eyes sliding easily over the naked picture hanging on the wall to Marley in the park to Bridget and Perry.

He wasn't teasing her, was he?

"Thanks," she said nervously.

Eric looked at her with sincere eyes that told her that he had barely even noticed the picture.

"Would you like a grand tour?" Bridget asked, mentally scanning the rest of the house for embarrassing pictures that she may have skipped over.

Eric nodded, and Bridget told herself to calm down. It wasn't like he hadn't been there already.

It was ironic that Bridget's dad had told her that Eric wasn't allowed in her room and she wasn't allowed in his. She couldn't imagine them listening to this rule, just because…Well, where else were they supposed to spend their time? She also couldn't imagine her dad caring enough to enforce it. The rule just hung there limply, its intentions clear – that Bee's dad had wanted to seem like he had a hold on Bridget's responsibility. It was clear that Bridget wouldn't be doing anything with a boy any time soon, though, so Bridget wondered why he bothered.

"This is the bathroom," Bridget said, introducing the bathroom as if it were her prized possession. Eric laughed, noticing as well.

"It's a very nice bathroom," he joked.

"Isn't it?" Bridget asked. "And over here – check this out, the shower curtain even opens!" She demonstrated with much fanfare, and he laughed.

"I've never had an actual shower curtain that opened before," he said as she made her way out of the bathroom and to her room. On the way she pointed out the linen closet, her dad's room, and Perry's room. Then she opened the door to her bedroom.

Bridget had thought about cleaning her room. She'd thought about picking up the various objects, like running shoes, birthday cards, books, and clothing, that lay scattered on the floor.

But then Bridget thought again. She knew that Eric had to know enough little things about her to know that her room was messy. Bridget wasn't the sort of person that would clean her room, and so she thought to do so would be fake and weird.

Eric's eyes widened as he took in all of the things Bridget owned in the world. She had all the typical things – she had a bookshelf, she had trophies (so many soccer trophies, but Eric wasn't surprised), she had school textbooks, her backpack lay in a corner, her desk housed paper after paper with the occasional pencil. It struck Eric as odd, to be seeing Bridget's belongings. Had she had that teddy bear last summer? Had she written a letter to her friends with that pen after what had happened happened?

Eric tried to stop thinking so much. Why was this such a big deal? He felt like pounding his head into a wall, hugging Bridget, and sinking under the floorboards to stay all at once. But he couldn't do that.


	9. Chapter 10

**It's hard to believe I'm already on chapter 10…Where does the time go?**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 10

Bridget was wearing her pajamas. Her brand spankin' new maternity pajamas. She wished she could wear her _old_ pajamas to show Eric. She didn't know why, but she was suddenly obsessed with showing him things. She'd spent an hour that afternoon waltzing around her room, picking up things for him to see, and quickly plopping them down again and moving to something else. He'd spent the time smiling and laughing at what she was saying, but he also looked slightly preoccupied. She wondered why vaguely, but then noticed her elephant lamp and got too caught up in the retelling of the story of the place down the street from Yes! where she'd bought it.

Now, though, she was standing in front of the mirror, examining her stomach and its bigness and sulking about how she used to be hot. Or, at least, she _thought_ she used to be hot. She hoped. She wondered if Eric still thought she deserved worshiping.

No. Probably not. Maybe not…

She shook her head. These were not thoughts to be having right now. When he was just through the wall. When her thoughts felt too vulnerable. Bridget had a thing about thoughts where she was positive _someone_ was listening. Right now, she was convinced that someone was Eric. She focused on her pink fuzzy slippers. There. That'll bore him.

Just through the wall, Eric was having troubles of his own. He was standing in front of the photograph of Bridget naked in the bucket and contemplating it. Not the naked part – that he didn't care about – but he was thinking about her in general. He moved to a picture of her just after senior prom. It was unconventional to put pictures of your children in the guest room, but Eric was beginning to suspect that Bridget and Perry were all their father really had.

And he didn't even have them, did he?

Eric couldn't imagine Bridget's life. He couldn't imagine having a mother who wasn't there at all and a father who was only there physically. He couldn't imagine – he really couldn't – what effect he himself, Eric Richman, must have had on Bridget Vreeland.

As thinking about Eric always made her do, Bridget ended up thinking about her mom. She found herself inside her pink fuzzy slippers and padding into the hallway as quietly as she could because everyone else was asleep and she didn't want her thoughts to be to herself. Maybe they weren't anyway, but Bridget wanted Eric to be able to listen in without feeling like he was invading her privacy.

She knocked on his door.

"Who is it?" he asked quietly.

"Bridget," she responded quietly.

Eric opened the door. Bridget walked inside. She saw his clothes from that day in the hamper in the corner and tried not to picture him taking them off.

"Could we talk?" she asked, biting her lip. She sat on his bed. The bed he was going to sleep in that night. The bed she herself had never slept in, but had sat on and even laid in several times in her life.

"Sure," he replied, staring not at her but at her bulging stomach. He thoughts about the movie he'd had to watch in high school on the process of a baby growing inside a mother's stomach. It looked like an alien. He bet his son didn't look like an alien. He bet his son was perfectly normal-looking.

"Did you know she killed herself?" Bridget asked as if this were a question right up there with 'how are you?'

"Yes," Eric responded carefully, not quite catching on to who it was they were talking about until after he'd said yes.

"Did you know I was the one who found her?" Bridget asked.

"No," Eric said, not sure if he was supposed to pick up the other half of the conversation that was dragging in the dust or to just let Bridget carry it.

"Well, I was." Bridget had picked it up, it seemed. "You want to know something?"

"Sure," Eric said, a little bewildered as to where this had come from and where it was going.

"You want to know what I saw when I walked into her room?"

"What?"

"No, Eric. You don't want to know what I saw. I saw my mom, lying on the floor, on the floor with a needle in her wrist and a really…dead…look…on her whole body. You know what happens when you see a dead person?"

Eric wanted to say something witty to break the tension, like the fact that you could see a thestral or something, but that wasn't entirely true, anyway. You had to see them die, and maybe seeing them die would be a whole lot better than just seeing them dead. So Eric was quiet.

"Your entire body…goes kind of rigid. And you don't really know _what_ to do, but you do know things. All at once, you know things. You know that one day, that'll be you, but even worse is, you know that they were you one day. Especially if they were your mom. You know that once, they could move and speak and laugh and smile and be _alive_, just like you can, but now they can't. And you feel really scared, too. That was the worst of it. I was petrified. I screamed because I was little, and that's all I knew how to do."

Eric wanted to hear more, but he also wanted Bee to stop.

"And one more thing." Bridget paused. "The worst part of the entire thing." She took a deep breath. "I have her hair."

It was the connection. The one thing that Bridget knew for sure she had that her mom had also had. It was what she'd inherited through a simple matter of DNA and genes and things that had been explained to Bridget several times. She understand it on the scientific level.

But it was funny. Bridget had her mom's hair, and her mom had killed herself. Bridget was the one with the hair now, the one who got the blessing and the curse of being judged whenever she went anywhere.

And it was ironic, too. Because the hair was where the similarities ended. Where Marley had had a mom, Bridget didn't. Where Marley had been insanely popular, Bridget wasn't. Where Marley had been weak, Bridget wasn't.

Those were the important differences. Those were the only ones that really mattered. Those weren't the little ones though. They were the big ones. The only differences that seemed to matter in this equation were the big ones, this equation that was so different from every other equation Bridget had encountered. It was the equation of what made the living different from the dead, and it didn't care about small things, so neither did you.

Bridget knew virtually nothing about her mother, and she longed to know the little things, even if they didn't matter. They didn't matter to get the final result, but they matter infinitely to Bridget in her own heart. She suspected she could get these things from her dad, but her dad was the only one. Bridget knew what she knew because she'd figured it out on her own. Bridget was clever like that, but at the same time, she was very, very dumb.

Bridget and Eric said good night after that, because anything that could have been said would have been weird to say after that. Bridget didn't regret it, though. If Eric was still there in the morning, she'd know he liked her for her and not who she had been.

It took both Bridget and Eric a long time to fall asleep. It was after 2 by the time they both drifted off, both roughly at the same time, but there's no way to tell when someone falls from consciousness to half-consciousness to sleep. They each lay on separate sides of the same wall in their beds, the covers pushed to the bottom of their feet, staring at the ceiling, thinking about – and trying not to think about – each other.

The next morning was a Monday, so Bridget and Eric both had to get up at six. Bridget's bus came at seven and Eric had to be at work at seven. They both had their alarms set for six. So they both stumbled into the hallway at 6:05. Perry and Bridget had it all worked out – Bridget got up at six, took a shower, and then got dressed while Perry took a shower. Then Bridget got back into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and then went downstairs to eat. Perry got dressed then and brushed his teeth and skipped breakfast (he wasn't a breakfast person).

Neither Bridget nor Eric had thought about the morning routine. But it was going to be very tight. There was no extra time for a third person to get ready. But Eric needed to shower too, at least that morning. So Bridget hopped in really quick to wash her hair, and then she went into her room to get dressed while Eric took a really quick shower. Then Perry got into the bathroom to take a slightly longer shower because he didn't know what was going on. Then Bridget and Eric both went downstairs for breakfast at the same time. They both got out bowls for cereal, and they discovered a mutual love for Cap'n Crunch. So they ate at the same table, both jumped up at the same time, and got a little fumbled up at the sink to wash the dishes.

Perry came downstairs with his backpack, and Bridget remembered her backpack was upstairs, but at that moment she really didn't feel like carrying a backpack on her back. She really didn't feel like going to school at all.

So she thought about not going to school. She thought about going to the office and asking if she could start taking the classes online now. She thought about it as Eric said a soft good-bye to her, full of feeling that told her he didn't want her to go, and he himself didn't want to go. She thought about it as she carried her backpack to the bus stop. She thought about it as she handed the backpack to Carmen when she got on the bus and Carmen held it in her lap because Bridget couldn't.

She thought about it as she strode into the office before first period to talk to them about it.

"So today the people in the office said I could start my classes online anytime I wanted, and I suggested maybe next Monday. You know, I'd have this week to say good-bye to…well, to people, I guess…and then…" Bridget stopped to shovel a forkful of spaghetti into her mouth. She was pleased to see that Eric did not, in fact, twirl his spaghetti with a spoon before eating it. "And then I'll start classes online."

Her father nodded, not commenting. He'd already talked to the school about it, and filled out all the forms necessary. It was up to Bridget now. She liked that. The freedom she was given in this.

Eric was sitting next to her, and Bridget felt a rush of happiness at the fact that he was staying just as far away from her as she was staying from him on purpose. So he found this awkward, too.

Perry had no reaction whatsoever, except to scrape the last bit of spaghetti off his plate and stand up to put his plate in the dishwasher and go upstairs.

"So, how was your day today?" Bridget's father asked.

"It was alright. A little weird. I'm excited to start school online." Bridget smiled. Her father didn't respond. Well, she'd tried. Her smile faded. Eric noticed.

"I'm really glad for you," he said. "It must be…strange…to go to school these days."

"It is. It's very bizarre." Bridget was glad Eric had responded at least. He could be counted on for that when her father couldn't be.

Bridget knew her dad loved her from the little things – the gentle caresses, the way he looked at her sometimes – but the big things made it seem like he didn't. It bothered Bridget that her dad didn't seem capable of showing his love anymore. She couldn't remember a time when he had.


	10. Chapter 11

**Nothing particular to say, except THANK YOU for the reviews! So…here!**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 11

There was a rhythm that Bridget and Eric fell into over the course of the next week. Eric woke up at 5:45 and used the bathroom before Bridget was even up. Then the morning would progress smoothly as it had normally done with Perry and Bridget. It would be much easier, though, when classes started up again at George Washington University the following Monday. He'd told the college he wouldn't be living on campus, because he would be staying with Bridget's family.

Bridget would come home from school and get her homework done, and then Eric would arrive home from work and they'd do something together. On Monday, it had been a backrub for Bridget (she ignored the awkwardness because she really needed it). On Tuesday, they'd gone to see a movie with Tibby. On Wednesday, they'd baked brownies. On Thursday, they had spent four hours playing poker with Perry and Carmen.

Bridget thought about this as she got dressed on Friday. It was her last day of going to school, and she didn't really have to do anything. Everything had already been transferred to her online classes, and she'd handed in her last schoolwork the day before. She just had to go to classes one more day, and then that was it until the fall.

Bridget smiled as she practically flew down the stairs. She was excited. She had that last-day-of-school feeling in her stomach, the feeling she loved. Last time she'd had that feeling, she was heading to Mexico for a summer, where she had no idea she'd meet Eric. She'd had no idea, so she was an innocent, unsuspecting girl who was excited about the prospect of summer vacation.

Now, she was not an innocent girl, because she'd thrown away the innocence during said summer vacation. But she was still unsuspecting. Had she been suspecting, she would have known why Eric looked a little worried as he said good-bye to her that morning and got into his car.

She wasn't suspecting, though, so she chalked it up to work stuff. She and Eric didn't talk about work or school. That was boring. They were interesting. The boring never met the interesting, so work and school weren't touched.

Bridget had made it all the way to lunch without a single problem. She was smiling still. Carmen, Lena, and Tibby were sitting at their usual table, but someone else was there. She looked like an upper classman, and she had dark brown hair with sunglasses perched atop her pixie-like head. Her nose turned up at the end, and her lipstick was a little too red. Bridget could see more cleavage than she would have liked. Carmen, Lena, and Tibby looked annoyed by her, but she was talking animatedly.

After Bridget had set her lunch bag on the table and sat down next to the new girl, she stopped talking. She looked at Bridget for a minute, and then Bridget's hair for a minute.

"Hi, I'm Allison," she said. "You must be Bridget!"

Bridget glanced at Carmen, who was sitting across the table from Allison. Carmen shrugged.

"Yes…" Bridget said cautiously, opening up her lunch bag.

"Don't mind me – I'm new here and just needed somewhere to sit," Allison said. But Bridget noticed that she had a guest sticker on her jeans.

"Oh, really? What grade are you in?" Bridget asked sweetly.

"I'm actually in college." Allison smiled.

"What do you want?" Bridget asked bluntly, because she knew that this wasn't someone whose feelings she had to worry about.

"I thought there was something you should know." Allison pulled a picture out of her pocket. It was crumpled and faded, but it was a picture of Eric. And Allison was sitting next to him. And by their posture, you could tell they definitely weren't just friends. "About Eric Richman."

Bridget glanced at Carmen, and then Lena, and then Tibby. And then the picture again.

"What's that?" Bridget asked stupidly.

"It's a picture of me and Eric together about a month ago, the night before he left…" Allison was tearing up a little. "He told me he was going to help his grandmother who was sick." She paused. "Let me guess. He didn't tell you he was in a very serious relationship?" Bridget shook her head, again glancing at her friends. Tibby's hand was on her fork, which was poised above her plate but had no food on it. "We've been going out since last May… I don't know why he didn't tell you about me." She looked at the picture, which looked like it had been carried around for months. "He told me he loved me…" She stood. "But honey…" She patted Bridget's shoulder. "Guys like that are never good for girls like you."

Bridget didn't want to be a girl like…like however Allison thought she was. She didn't want to know a guy like Eric. She didn't want to be in that cafeteria at that moment.

"Do you know where he is?" Allison asked.

Bridget shook her head. Allison turned and walked away. "I don't know who you're talking about," Bridget added in a voice that wasn't hers.

"Bee!" Tibby exclaimed, dropping her fork and forgetting about her salad. "You don't _believe_ that b-"

"Language," Lena warned automatically. But Bridget knew Lena had been thinking the same thing.

"Fine, I'll say it," Carmen said. "You do _not_ under any circumstances believe that bitch!" She was almost shouting. People were looking. Bridget was shaking.

"Come on. We're going. We're going to find Eric before she does." Lena took Bridget by the shoulders and steered her toward the doors. Carmen picked up Bridget's lunch bag and followed Lena, Tibby, and Bridget out of the school. They didn't care who saw.

Carmen had her license. Tibby almost did. Lena wasn't allowed to drive yet. Bridget was in too much of a state to drive. So Carmen took the wheel of her car and made sure everyone was loaded in before she peeled away from the school. She was headed to the hardware store. She was a girl on a mission. She could not be stopped.

Except at every red light in the entire town of Bethesda. Lena was next to Bridget in the backseat, but she wasn't really saying anything to help. She wasn't saying anything at all.

Tibby was glaring at the road in front of them. "Bridget," she started when the car jerked to a stop at yet another red light. "Who are you going to believe? The guy who was so respectable and honest he would-"

"Have sex with a fifteen year old?" Bridget muttered.

"No," Tibby said, back-tracking. "He would wait a whole two months before having sex with a beauty like you that he was obviously infatuated with."

"He was infatuated. Boys who are infatuated do strange things," Bridget said, not sounding angry, even though her words were angry.

"Okay. So you believe the slut who shows up at our school with absolutely no notice-"

"Just shut up," Bridget said. "Let me deal with it, will you?"

"But you won't deal with it right! That's what I'm saying!" Tibby exclaimed through clenched teeth. "Use your logic."

"I'd rather just kill him," Bridget said monotonously.

There was silence.

"So what _are_ you going to do?" Carmen, queen of overreactions, asked.

"I have no idea," Bridget answered.

They arrived at the hardware store, and all walked in together, despite Bridget saying she wanted to go in alone. They saw Eric right away, stacking paint on a shelf. Or at least, he was holding the paint next to the shelf. He was staring into space, looking agitated.

"Eric Richman, I hate you," Bridget said under her breath before he was in hearing distance. Tibby growled at Bridget. Bridget put on a fake smile. "I'm gonna kill him with kindness," she said sarcastically, turning to Tibby. "Kill him. With kindness."

"Hey, Bee!" Eric said, dropping the paint with a loud thud and running over to her. He stopped when he noticed that her face looked like she really wanted to kill him, and her friends' faces looked like they thought she might.

"Eric. What the _hell_ are you doing here, and not at your grandma's house? You know she's really sick, right?" Bridget asked sweetly.

Eric paled. "Allison talked to you?"

It was the wrong thing to say, although Bridget wasn't sure what the right thing to say was. Except maybe 'I love you, Bridget.' And even that was questionable from a guy like _him_.

"This is so typical-movie," Tibby whispered from behind Bridget. Carmen jabbed Bridget to say something.

"Yes, I met your girlfriend," Bridget said.

"_Girlfriend_," Eric scoffed.

Again, wrong thing to say.

"It's strange that you say that, since you two have been going out since _May_, and it's really serious." Bridget kept calm. She was cool. She would wait to cry.

"What?" Eric asked, confused now. "What are you talking about?" Then, comprehension dawned. "Oh, no. That's what she told you?"

Lena couldn't watch. Tibby was stupefied. Carmen figured that was all Bridget would need to turn around and say nevermind, it was all a big misunderstanding. The look on Eric's face was so sincere, so loving, so full of raw emotion for Bridget, even when she was completely chewing him out for something he very obviously didn't do, that she couldn't imagine Bridget not noticing.

Bridget, apparently, could. "Yes, that's what she told me. Come on, Eric. What were you trying to do? Were you trying to ruin my life even more than you already have?"

Eric couldn't help being offended. "Ruined your life? I ruined your life?"

"Yes. Who do you think did _this_," she gestured to her stomach, "to me?"

"Whoa. You said it was your fault," Eric said.

"Well it wasn't," Bridget said. "That's beside the point, though." She was struggling for control. "I wish I had never met you."

Eric staggered backwards. Lena covered her eyes. Tibby made a fist. Carmen grabbed Bridget's arm.

"She doesn't mean it," Carmen said. "She's just…"

"I do mean it," Bridget said, her words ringing loudly in Eric's mind.

So when Allison strode up to him and looped her arm through his, and Bridget just looked at her, stunned, Eric looked coldly at Bridget and turned to Allison.

"Do you want to go for a drink?"


	11. Chapter 12

**-insert something clever-**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 12

Eric sat in his car with Alison in the passenger's seat, thinking about Bridget. He was driving, he was vaguely aware of it. He was also vaguely aware that he didn't care if he crashed. He knew he'd get into trouble for just walking out of work, but it had gotten his point across to Bridget. Eric knew he had to ask Alison a million and ten questions, mainly, _What is your problem? _But for right now, he was thinking about Bridget's hair. To be honest, he didn't need anything to drink to be drunk. Her hair did that for him. And he knew he wasn't driving to the bar anyway – he'd never really had the intention of going there. He wanted to go somewhere where he and Alison could talk.

And he'd have to go up to the college campus to request a dorm room. He wondered if that would be okay.

"You're quiet," Alison commented.

Eric didn't even know what to think, let alone what to say.

"I have questions," Eric said. Smart.

"I figured you would."

"Care to explain?" Eric asked. They were driving toward Bridget's house, so Eric jerked the wheel at the next road and started down that one instead.

"Care to stop the car before you hurt us both?" Alison returned.

Eric really couldn't stand her, but he pulled over at a gas station anyway. He needed information. He needed to know what Alison had told Bridget, and how she'd even known about Bridget in the first place. He felt, at that moment, as though, if he didn't get that information, he might burn up and the universe would be better for it.

"Can you please tell me now?" Eric asked. He stared at a man in a thick coat pumping gas into his Chevy.

"No, I don't think I will, just yet," Alison said, just to be contrary.

How had Eric put up with her for 4 months?

"I think you will or else you won't have anywhere to stay tonight," Eric said, ignoring the glaring fact that he himself had nowhere to stay that night.

"Okay," Alison said. "I read the letter she sent you – the one you left on the desk?"

"When?" Eric asked through clenched teeth. He'd act like _that_ wasn't infuriating in itself.

"A little before you left." Alison was examining a nail.

"And?" Eric prompted.

"So I got to thinking about it. That's where you went. So I decided to come and find this Bridget person. I looked her up in the directory on the website for the camp. It said what school she went to. So I just said the right things to the right people and got in. Then I told her the truth. I'm your girlfriend."

"You told her more than that," Eric said, because he knew just that fact wouldn't be enough to make Bridget as mad as she was. "You told her we've been going out since May."

"That was all it took. The rest she assumed. Eric, you have to figure it out sometime." A chill went up Eric's spine as Alison leaned closer to whisper, "She doesn't trust you. After what you did? Who would?"

_After what you did? Who would?_ It rang in Eric's mind until long after he'd ordered Alison out of the car and squealed out of the gas station parking lot. He sped along the street until he arrived at Bridget's house. He didn't know what he was going to do. His thoughts were coming too fast for him to make sense of any of them.

Bridget was being led into her house by Carmen, Lena, and Tibby when Eric passed it on the street, so he slowed down to see if maybe Tibby would notice, since she was the last one in anyway. She did. She gave him the middle finger and went inside.

Eric glowered at the dashboard. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know where to go. He didn't know how to fix this, or when to fix it. He realized he knew nothing about girls.

He understood why Bridget was mad. He understood that, if he and Alison really _had_ been going out since May, then that would have been very, very bad about Eric's behavior in Mexico. So somehow, he had to tell Bridget that they hadn't been dating since May.

And Eric didn't know why he'd gotten upset when Bee had said it was his fault, and then said she wished she'd never met him. Not angry – just upset in general. He knew it was his fault, and he knew that she would have been better off had she not met him. But he at least had hoped she was glad she had met him.

The world disappointed him at times like these with its inability to notice something was seriously wrong and for not helping him. He wanted a giant earthquake to come through and he would be the only one who could rescue Bridget; something like in a movie. Something that could be of any use.

But the only thing that would resemble a natural disaster was a thunderstorm.

So Eric drove back to the hotel, booked a room for the next two nights, and went to the office at GW to see if he could talk his way into a dorm room.

And that night he slept in his hotel room. And Bridget slept in her room. And the world was back to the way it had been before, only it was slightly off-kilter.

Bridget pictured a song with lots of violins. They all played slow and long notes, wavering when they got too long before running out of steam and stopping. There were more notes, then, after those ones, each progressively lower and lower in sound. Bridget didn't know what was wrong with her. She didn't know why she was upset. She knew she couldn't believe what Alison had said, but some of it didn't add up. Of course Eric had to have had a girlfriend at some point, and it very well could have been a long time ago that the picture was taken. That part could potentially make sense. But the problem was Eric's own reaction to Alison. He'd welcomed her to him. Bridget wondered what he was thinking now. Did he know what a low-life he was?

Tibby, Lena, and Carmen were drinking their chocolate milkshakes at the table in Wendy's, and Bridget was staring at the fan circling above their heads. What was wrong with her? What was wrong with her that she'd chosen such a horrible person to be…whatever Eric had been? Did she really have that bad a taste in guys? Was she that stupid?

Bridget pondered the fan. She wished she were a ceiling fan. She wished she could spend her days circling, with absolutely no troubles what-so-ever. Just going around and around and around, again and again, not having to worry about anything but the people below. She would be able to see people, people like herself, sixteen years old, hanging out with a couple of friends, not touching her milkshake, and pregnant. She would have wisdom beyond her years, if she were a ceiling fan. She would know what to do if she were a ceiling fan.

Eric had to go to class on Monday. He didn't want to, but he had to do it. He took his notebook and his laptop, not sure which people at GW used, and took a quick look at himself in the mirror his roommate, Alex, had on the wall.

"No looking at my mirror," Alex said in a low voice from his bed, where he was reading a book.

Eric didn't know what had happened to Alex's last roommate, but he was beginning to have an idea. He wished he were at Bridget's house. If he were, Bridget would just be waking up to start her classes online and he'd be leaving reluctantly. Now, though, he was glad to be leaving the dorm room, but not glad to be going to class.

It was a geology class. Eric hated geology, but he needed some kind of science, and the other options were even worse than geology. So geology it was. He wondered at the sidewalk as he walked along it, passing other students talking on cell phones or to friends. He was alone. Everyone else wasn't. Eric really wanted to wake up on Friday again and be able to re-do the day. He wished he could relive it the way he wanted to now, with the hindsight he had at how horrible it had gone. But that wasn't possible. So here he was, and that was it. The end of the story.

It wasn't, though, the end of the story, was it? Eric sighed and opened the door to the building he thought he was supposed to be in - according to the map he was trying to look at inconspicuously so he wouldn't look like a dork, he was a block east of the real building, but this building was named the right thing, so Eric figured it must be.

He strode up to the third floor, and to room 46. 46C. [Author's note: I know absolutely nothing about the buildings or the room numbers of GW.] He opened the door, praying it was the right room.

It wasn't. There was a janitor scrubbing the floor. "Wrong building," the janitor grumbled.

Eric sighed again. "Where is the right building, then?" he asked.

"You're lookin' for the original building. It's down the street thataway, make a left."

Eric felt stupid. He thanked the janitor and ran down the three flights of stairs he'd just climbed. Eric hit the sidewalk within a minute and literally sprinted to the other building. The 'right building.' The 'original building.' Don't be confusing or anything. Eric's watch told him he had two minutes to get to the class. He climbed another three flights of stairs, thanking the Lord for his soccer abilities that kept his breathing in check after sprinting a block and a half and running up three flights of stiars. He reached the classroom just in time. It was a large group of students who were all milling about before the lecture began, and Eric slid into a seat unnoticed. He breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't want to be embarrassed on his first day by being late.

Bridget's alarm clock woke her up at 9. Bridget hated her alarm clock right then. She took one look at it and swatted it off her bedside table. It hit the floor, but did not cease beeping. She sighed, stood up, and paced the room once before turning off the stupid alarm clock. She didn't feel like being awake. She didn't feel like taking her classes, online or not. She felt like crawling under the covers and sleeping for the rest of eternity, or at least until human stupidity had ceased.

Bridget powered up her laptop. She signed in. She looked at the wall. She looked at the ceiling. She realized she had the house to herself. With this realization came the realization that Bridget could do anything she wanted. She could be as loud and crazy and insane as she wanted.

This would normally have excited her, but today, it bothered her.

Her cell phone buzzed with a text. Carmen. 'Hey, Bee! U r lucky nt 2 b here. Tchr is CRAZY.'

'Wut did she do?' Bridget texted back, smiling to herself. At least she had her friends still.

'Assigned in-class essay. Fnshd 5 min ago...Hows the LIFE goin?'

'The LIFE?'

'Slpng in. doing classwork in pjs. u no.'

'O. Not begun yet. Clss strts in 5.'

'G2G! Tme 4 math!'

And Carmen was gone. Bridget looked at her clock. She kind of wished she were at school, however insane it was. She wished she could be with Carmen, sitting next to her while writing an in-class essay.

She wished, more than anything, that she weren't pregnant.


	12. Chapter 13

**Hey, guess what today is! August 20****th****! You know what that means?**

…

**It means you get another chapter! So here you go! Another chapter! (I tried it without the exclamation marks and it just didn't seem as excited, it seemed more sarcastic.)**

**I'm sorry it's been so long!**

**P.S. There are people I have to thank! There are, of course, my lovely lovely reviewers, including Bronte whom I love very much (and is in my homeroom! Woot woot! Partay!), and my mother who tells me when I made a very huge mistake. **

**Okay. Enough intro. Time to actually write the chapter…**

**OH WAIT. Something creepy just happened. I'm sitting in my room, minding my own business, trying to slam my muse into a corner so I can tape her there and use her, and I hear this creepy bull-horn-type magnified voice from somewhere near the highway which is somewhat near my house. And there is a shopping mall type thing there, too. So I couldn't hear what it was saying, but I couldn't help picturing some huge monster thing going like, "Must. Eat. Humans." and that's what I was hearing! So that got me to thinking, what about the people who are the neighbors of the people who have really creepy things happen in horror movies? Like, what do the neighbors think of screaming and what-not going on in the house? And then I told myself to just forget about it, but about five minutes later, AKA just now, I heard a squeal of tires and I swear what sounded like a scream (but I'm pretty sure it was just an elongated squeal). And now I'm scared for my life. Thought I'd share.**

**Oh, wait. Now I'm hearing cheering. So either they defeated the monster, or it was a party at my neighbors' house. But I hope they shut up so I can shut up so I can write the darn chapter.**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 13

"Bridget Vreeland, if you do not sit on that carpet," Carmen pointed, as if there was a way to be unsure as to what carpet she was talking about, "and pick up that phone," Tibby was gesturing with Bridget's cell phone, "and call that boy," Lena was standing next to Bridget holding a note from Eric that she'd found on Bridget's desk that just said 'Dinner's in 10 minutes' (written a few weeks ago because it was a dare between Bridget and Eric to see who could go longer without talking – Bridget won because Eric had to answer his cell phone), "or else none of us will talk to you ever again."

It was Wednesday night, and school had already been called off for the next day because of the forecast calling for snow. So Lena, Carmen, and Tibby had shown up at Bridget's house and were planning to get snowed in get Eric and Bridget back on speaking terms.

Bridget stood by her window. It had begun flurrying. She was still wearing her pajamas. She watched the little flurries as they fell from the sky, and she thought about how, wherever Eric was, it was snowing there, too. Was he in the hotel room? Was he eating dinner? Was he with Alison? Was he thinking about Bridget?

No. He wasn't. Bridget reached down to open the window and felt a cold draft immediately. She opened the screen, and even more wind blew in, bringing with it snowflakes. Bridget put her hand outside the window, her friends watching curiously, and caught a few snowflakes on her palm. She watched as they melted, and she rubbed her hand on her pants. She had on a short sleeve shirt, but she wasn't sure if she was cold or not.

"Bee…" Tibby said carefully, taking a step toward her. Lena was already next to Bridget, so she took Bridget's hand.

"I'm not going to jump out or anything, guys," Bridget snapped. "I just like the snow."

Bridget thought the snow was a lot like herself. Cold and stupid. Her heart was frozen over, frozen over because of its brokenness, and she was stupid. She felt stupid. She had fallen for a boy who wasn't loyal. Who didn't remember a girlfriend he had when he met a girl who was young – too young – and had spectacular hair. She realized they hadn't even known each other then – not known each other when they did what they did. Their attraction – her attraction, his attraction – they were both based off of shallow things – initial reactions to someone never meant anything in the long run.

Like Bridget had thought Eric was responsible and had good morals. But he had been a taken man from the very beginning, and that made it all that much worse.

Bridget sighed, pressed her chin to her collarbone briefly before looking up at her friends. She snatched the note from Lena and the cell phone from Tibby and hit speed dial 4. She glanced at Carmen to glare while it rang. It rang three times before Eric answered with a very tentative, very wary hello.

"Hello," Bridget said. Her voice sounded weird to her.

"Hello," Eric repeated, just seeming to grasp the meaning of the fact that Bridget was calling him.

Carmen was now in a huddle with Lena and Tibby, and Bridget continued to glare until she realized that they didn't care what she was doing. She turned to the window. A shiver went up her spine.

"You there?" Eric asked.

Bridget had forgotten the rule of the phone – you had to talk. "Yeah. Sorry."

Wait. No. This wasn't how this was supposed to go. She was supposed to be chewing him out. She was supposed to be yelling.

"Hey, Bee?" Eric asked.

Bridget was angry that he would have the audacity to call her that, but she couldn't seem to find the courage to yell at him.

"Yes?" Bridget asked.

"Alison and I started dating in September. After I got your letter." Open mouth, insert foot. Eric had probably thought this would be self-explanatory, but it just made Bridget angrier.

So he knew he'd made a sixteen-year-old pregnant, and he'd gone and gotten a girlfriend anyway? Bridget's nostrils flared.

"Oh. So you basically just forgot about me," Bridget said defensively.

"No! No, no, that was the point, so I wouldn't have to be _thinking_ about you all the time, so I wouldn't come to you-"

But Bridget had already hung up.

"So I wouldn't realize how much I really loved you," Eric whispered to the phone.

There was a time, when Eric was in high school, when he thought that soccer would solve every problem he had. If his girlfriend was acting weird, he'd just go kick around a soccer ball. If he was worried about a test, he'd watch a soccer game on TV. He lived and breathed soccer. He rarely did anything that wasn't soccer-related. Eric got to a point where he thought that if he didn't play soccer, he wouldn't be able to live.

Eric was back to that point. He'd driven to the high school, and, even though it was snowing, had kicked the soccer ball around in the snow. Little white flakes were in his hair and on his coat, and the soccer ball was getting slippery, and Eric thought he might be getting a cold, and it was freezing outside.

And still Eric played.

He hadn't so much as touched a soccer ball in months. He loved the feel of it under his feet, when he dribbled it across the thin layer of snow now coating the field, when he kicked it straight into the goal. When he dug in his foot under it and gave it that extra lift so it would soar into the top corner of the goal. The stadium lights weren't on, and the only light he had came from his headlights, which he'd left trained on the field. There was something pathetic about it, actually. He was all alone in the snow on a night in February with just the light of his own headlights to show him the goal.

Eric took another shot, and it sailed past the goal to hit…

Another car, pulling in next to his. Whoever was driving cut the engine but left their headlights on, too. Eric couldn't see the car past the glare of the headlights, but he very clearly saw the person who climbed out of the car.

"You stole my spot!" she yelled, not angrily.

"Sorry," he called back, not talking about what she was talking about.

Bridget jogged toward him, holding a soccer ball of her own. "It's okay," she said, and Eric knew she wasn't talking about the spot anymore, either.

Eric thought it would be appropriate to say more, to talk it out, to see eye to eye for sure, but then he realized that they could do that later, after some of the friendship or whatever it was had built back up. Instead, when she dropped her soccer ball and kicked it to him, he kicked it back, and it was the equivalent of talking it out.

In the summer Eric had known Bridget, he'd never actually shared the soccer field with her. Eric had, many times, kicked the ball around with Bridget in the safe walls of his dreams. Some nights he beat her, some nights she beat him. They were always in beautiful Baja, the bright blue sea gazing at them. It was always a great experience in that the game was very easy – there was little effort on either of their parts. They were well matched for each other.

In real life, Bridget kicked Eric's butt all over that field. She scored goal after goal after goal, and he only scored a few. His pride was hurt, as well as his nose, when she kicked the ball too high and it hit his face. Eric had liked to think of himself as an exceptional player, a little out of practice, maybe, but overall very good. He knew now that he could not possibly be good if Bridget was better than him. So long as Bridget could beat him, Eric may as well have been playing basketball.

It wasn't like Bridget was the one being overly competitive. She wasn't taunting him. She really wasn't saying anything, except when she hit him in the face - then she apologized fifteen times over and asked if he was okay sixteen times.

Bridget had come to the soccer field for old times' sake. She'd come because her friends were pressuring her to go to his hotel and tell him she was sorry. She wasn't sorry. She was pissed off. She reserved the right to stay pissed off for as long as she wanted. So Bridget dug her feet in and drove straight to the soccer field with the intent of playing until she couldn't feel anything anymore, because that was what she wanted.

When she saw Eric there, what she wanted changed. Seeing him playing, seeing his face, which looked so anxious and upset, and knowing instinctively why he was there, changed all that. There was something inside Bridget that had told her that she couldn't hate him forever, and that something was right. Bridget couldn't even hate Eric for a few days. Bridget was beginning to think there was only one direction for the two of them to go: love.


	13. Chapter 14

**So, after an amazing bout of writer's block during chapter 13, which I used to think was a lucky number just to be different, and now agree that perhaps it is, in fact, **_**un**_**lucky, here's chapter 14! Which you're hopefully not getting days and days after I started it. :(**

**Once again – REVIEWS GET ME THROUGH THE DAY.**

**I'll never forget getting views from people in countries I'd never even heard of for my Twilight fic, Father and Son. (Don't read it, I really don't think it's that good.) So even to have you guys, from countries I **_**have**_** heard of, reading this…is amazing. 3**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 14

"Luke."

"No."

"Chester."

"…shire cat?"

"That would be a no."

"You are hard to please, Tibby. It isn't even your baby!" Bridget slammed her fork into her omelet.

"I know. But it's a very important thing to name your baby something good," Tibby said, looking first at Bridget, then Eric, next to her, and then Carmen, then Lena. "You all got perfectly normal names."

Lena scoffed. Tibby ignored her.

"I got _Tabitha._" Tibby said her name with hatred. "So of course I had to shorten it to Tibby. But what if I couldn't? What if I had to go by Tabitha my whole life? And what is Chester going to go by? Ches? Ter? Chessy?"

Bridget sighed into her omelet. It had been an on-going search for the past two days to find a good name. Ever since she and Eric had shown up together at her house, and he'd moved back in with her, she and Eric had spent each moment free poured over the baby name book.

Now, at the 24-hour diner, at 1AM on Friday night, they were presenting their findings to Bee's friends. It wasn't going well.

"We finally all get together," Bridget said steadily, not getting upset, "and every idea we had is shot down?"

"I'm still up for Eric Junior," Eric offered.

Bridget allowed a short laugh.

"How about…" Carmen started "…Carson?"

"That is not a boy's name," Bridget said.

"Yes it is!"

"No it isn't."

"Oh, it so is."

"Have you ever met a boy named Carson?"

"No, but have you ever met a girl named Carson?"

"Carson Jennings, 7th grade. Starting forward on my soccer team."

"Oh."

"Leonard," Lena piped in.

"No," Bridget and Eric said in unison.

"I'm not going to curse the kid with anything like Tabitha," Tibby said, "So what about Tyler?"

Bridget and Eric considered. "We'll add it to the list," Bee said, tapping her temple. Eric pulled out his iPhone and typed it into the note titled NAMES.

"Hey, no fair. You have to use our names, too!" Carmen said.

"Tyler isn't really related to Tibby's name," Bridget defended, thinking that if she had to tack the names Leonard and Carson onto her poor son's name, she might just tack a death wish to his head.

"Mmmhm. Tyler Leonard Carson…Vreeland?" Carmen raised her eyebrows. "What's the last name going to be?"

"We, uh…Vreeland," Bridget said, casting a glance at Eric as if she was unsure. He nodded. "We talked about it, and yeah. It'll be Vreeland."

An awkward silence descended upon them. The waitress came up and asked if their food was alright, and they said yes, it was all great.

"What are we going to do," Tibby asked, "about the baby?"

Bridget liked the way Tibby phrased the question: 'we.' What are 'we' going to do.

"Okay, we've worked it out. So the baby will sleep in my room, my dad got Perry's and my old crib down from the attic. And then, since I'm taking classes online, I guess I'll take care of him while Eric's at classes, and then in the evenings we'll just…I don't know. Take care of it together. Do whatever."

Tibby looked concerned at this, and Bridget obviously knew it wasn't an ideal situation, but before she could say anything, a look of horror came over her face.

"Guys," she said, trying to keep calm, "I _think_ the baby's coming."

It was like magic, how it happened. They were sitting in a booth at a 24-hour diner in Bethesda, Maryland on an icy February night around 1AM, and then fifteen minutes later, Bridget, Eric, Carmen, Tibby, and Lena were all running through the doors of the hospital. It was a surreal experience, how they all crowded around the receptionist's desk, yelling all at once. Somehow they got Bridget into a room and Bridget sat on the bed while a nurse came in and asked questions. Tibby, Carmen, Lena, and Eric all stood together in the corner, casting worried glances at each other.

Tibby counted it out on her fingers. "September, October, November, December, January, February…that's six months. Pregnancy is supposed to last nine months." She cursed.

"I was a month early," Carmen said quietly. "I'm sure it'll be okay." She was talking mostly to herself instead of her friends.

"Yeah, but three months is a lot different than one month," Lena said reasonably. They all looked to Eric because he was the boy, the father, and was the one who had been to birthing classes with Bridget.

He just wrung his hands and looked at the nurse, waiting for confirmation that everything would be okay.

The nurse looked a little worried herself.

Half an hour later, Tibby was draped across Carmen's lap, Carmen was sitting on the uncomfortable chair in the corner, Lena was positioned next to Bridget's bed, being the one who was most in control, and Eric was talking to the nurse, trying to figure out what was going to happen.

Bridget was having quick contractions now, close together. It was moving very fast, but that was how Bridget did things – fast. Too fast.

Carmen was playing with Tibby's hair, circling her finger with it and humming a Christmas carol to herself. Tibby was calling Bridget's dad, because no one else was brave enough to do it.

"Hello, Mr. Vreeland? … It's Tibby. … I'm sorry to wake you up, but we have a problem. … Yes, it's important. … Bridget's in labor. … About two minutes apart. … Yeah. … Room 318. … Okay, you're welcome. … See you."

"He's coming," she announced, flipping closed her cell phone. Bridget squinched up her face, and Tibby took this as a "Thanks for calling my dad, Tibby. I love you."

"Okay, Bridget," the nurse said, "I have to measure you again now. Let's see…" She scooted closer to Bridget, who obediently opened her legs.

"PUSH!" "YOU CAN DO IT, BEE!" "Where's Brave Bridget, Daredevil Extraordinaire?" "Push! You can do it!" "I see the head!" "Oh, your kid has a head, Bee!" "One more!" The whole room was erupting, and Bridget let out a blood-curdling scream with the final push.

The nurse pulled out the baby. Bridget beamed. Eric beamed. Tibby, Carmen, and Lena stared at the ugly little thing lying motionless in the nurse's arms.

"It's beautiful," Bridget sighed, relaxing into the pillow.

"It is," Eric agreed.

**Sorry this chapter was so short. But I have to think about what I'm going to do with the next chapter, and this was the best cutting-off point for it. So…there. New chapter shortly.**


	14. Chapter 15

**Mmmm… Well, I've spent this evening listening to Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. (great band), and now, listening to .com/watch?v=iS9Jxh1l7zo&feature=search, I'll write Chapter 15.**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 15

Bridget sighed with contentment, staring into Eric's eyes. They were waiting for the nurse to come back with their son, and Carmen, Lena, and Tibby had given them some alone time by leaving to wait in the hallway. Eric's eyes were very dark brown, almost black, and Bridget wondered if there was such a thing as truly black eyes. If there was truly black anything. There was always a fleck of brown, or a fleck of something bright that wasn't black, no matter how dark it looked. Bridget wondered at Eric's eyes, and he wondered back, thinking about their blueness, and the way they seemed to hold the whole ocean in them. They were the blue of the sea – not the green sea, not the one polluted with garbage and junk people had carelessly thrown into it, but the true blue that it once must have been, before there was any land to destroy it. That was Bridget's eyes – they were the color of pureness and simplicity.

"What should we name him?" Eric asked, breaking the silence.

"I was thinking of Marley," Bridget said.

"Marley…" Eric considered, and Bridget was suddenly afraid he wouldn't like it. "I love it."

Bridget beamed. Eric beamed back.

"Bridget Vreeland and Eric Richman?" a nurse asked, walking into the room. "Your baby is in the NICU. Third door on the left, second floor. You should probably wait a while before going, until you feel ready-"

But Bridget was up and out of the bed and charging out of the room.

"Can my friends come?" she asked the nurse.

"No, family only."

Bridget gave her friends a sympathetic pout before starting down the hallway. Her father was there now, and he joined her. Eric came up behind her, saying things like, "Are you sure you feel alright?" and "We can wait."

"Yes, I'm sure, and no, of course we can't wait!" Bridget gave him a fake glare. He pretended to be hurt. Bridget's dad shook his head. He didn't say anything.

"Okay, Bee. We need a middle name," Eric said as they stepped into the elevator.

"What's the first name?" Bee's dad asked.

"Marley," Bridget responded.

There was a silence, and then Bridget's dad patted her hand. "Beautiful name, honey. I'm sure he's a wonderful little boy." But he looked worried.

And then it occurred to Bridget. Marley had been born in the 22nd week of pregnancy. That was early. Way too early.

"Wait, dad…Do you think he'll be okay?" Bridget asked. "Is he – I mean, do they survive that early?"

"Well, he's in an incubator now, I'm sure, and he's probably hooked up to a lot of living support. They do have a chance of survival born this early." Her dad looked slightly afraid to be telling her this.

Bridget glanced at Eric. It had never, even once, occurred to her that the baby could die. "A _chance_ of survival? Not a chance of death?"

"I'm sorry, honey, but preterm babies often have lots of complications."

"Complications? Like what?" They were on the second floor now and were heading down the hall to the third door on the left.

"Well, sometimes their lungs haven't fully developed, or their heart, or their brains…There's surgery that can be performed, but this early is…it's a toss-up, honey. You never know – Marley could survive." He said the name Marley really weird, like it carried too much emotion to just be thrown through his voice box casually.

"Mmmm," Bridget hummed absently, opening the door and walking into a huge room full of incubators. The babies were varying sizes, but they all looked pretty much the same: tiny. Very, very tiny. Some were hooked up to a lot of machines, some were hooked up to one or two machines.

They found Vreeland, and Bridget was almost too afraid to look inside. Marley was going to be hooked up to tons of machines, she knew. She didn't want to see that.

But she really wanted to see her baby boy. So she looked. And there he was. Tiny. Hooked up to machines. And he did have her hair. Bridget had to smile. Someone else would have The Hair. There were little gloves to put your hands into the incubator and hold the baby, and Eric went first. Bridget looked around as Eric stroked the baby, talking to it softly. There were a few other parents in here, all looking tired and stressed. Bridget was the only one in a bloody hospital gown. She felt self-conscious about it, which was strange for Bridget, because she never much cared what other people thought. Well, it was shaping up to be a strange day.

"Here," Eric said, moving aside and letting Bridget see Marley again. Bridget put her hands into the gloves, and tentatively touched her baby's cheek.

Suddenly, she felt like crying. She couldn't bear the idea that Marley might not live. She couldn't bear the idea that another Marley could die.

"Maybe we should leave," she said quickly, pulling her hands away and turning to Eric.

"No, no…We should stay. He's a beautiful baby, Bee," Eric said, not sensing her distress.

"No!" Bridget felt frantic. "No, we have to leave. We have to!" She thought she might cry. She didn't want to cry. She never cried.

"Why?" Eric asked.

Bridget's dad was pretending not to hear, because that was what he did best. He didn't hear when Bridget was upset.

"Come on, let's _go_," Bridget said, tugging at Eric's wrist.

Bridget's dad would have let her go. He would have stayed and let Bridget leave because he didn't want to handle her pain on top of his. Or maybe he just couldn't handle it. Maybe that was it.

But Eric came. Bridget dragged him all the way out to the hallway and back to their room, past a wondering Carmen, Lena, and Tibby who let them pass, no questions asked.

"What's wrong, Bee?" Eric asked.

"Marley's going to die!" Bridget wailed, bursting into tears.

"No…No, he's not," Eric said calmly, looking a little less calm than he should have.

"Yes he is! Everyone who I've ever cared about always leaves!" Bridget had no idea where this was coming from, but it felt right.

"No. That's not true." Eric grated his teeth together. "That is not true at all, Bridget. Your friends haven't left. _I_ haven't left. Marley won't leave. I promise." Eric squeezed Bridget's hand.

"You promise?" Bridget asked, looking up at him through watery eyes. He looked so sincere he believed he could actually promise such a thing and mean it.

"I do." Eric smiled. Bridget smiled. And then a tear escaped Eric's right eye, and Bridget leaned in closer to him. She meant to wipe it away, but it didn't quite work out that way.

Eric met her halfway, and their lips joined in a new way that they hadn't the first time. Now there was history. There was true feeling. It wasn't empty, like an empty promise of happiness. It was full and real, and it was better than anything Bridget had ever imagined.

**Guys! You're falling down on reviews! C'mon, I want reviews because I am a greedy, hungry girl who needs reviews because I love them. Please.**

**Anyway, I'm going on vacation on Friday, and I'll be returning midweek the following week. I'll take my laptop and work on this story, and maybe get ahead in updates for when school starts so I have some reserve. Internet access is a big IF. So I'll update IF I can. Which I probably won't. So. I'll still try and get in as much as I can before I leave on Friday, but I'll be pretty busy beforehand, so it may only be a chapter. 3 you guys. **


	15. Chapter 16

**I've basically been putting this chapter off. I haven't had much muse for it, and it's going to be a hard one to write. So I went on vacation, took a few days away from it, and I think I'm ready to write it. I love you guys for being patient!**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 16

Bridget had an idea. She had an idea about why everyone said that love came from the heart. It was something she'd never understand until just now, standing in the hospital, with Eric's arm around her and her son in front of her, strapped up to his machines that kept his own heart beating. Now Bridget understand that the reason people say that you love with your heart and not your mind is because your heart is what keeps your blood pumping. Without your heart, your body could not function at all. There was no way to live without a heart. And love was the same way. Once you felt the love for another person, you could not function without it. There was no way to live without love. After you'd felt it, there was no turning back.

Bridget was a risk-taker. So that idea that she was out on a limb, and if she turned around she would fall, and if she turned to the side, or the other side, or even moved at all, she would plunge to the ground and most certainly die, didn't bother her.

Someone seeing the little family through a camera, as if they were on film, would have seen what was coming before Bridget herself did, so immersed in her thoughts and her love was she. There was the tall, dark, handsome father, beaming at his son and his Bridget in turn, and there was the gorgeous blonde mother, beaming at her son and her Eric. And there was the baby boy, unconscious amongst the tubes that were his lifeline. Behind them was the Grim Reaper himself, holding his clipboard and peering at the three over his glasses, wearing a doctor's uniform, pretending to be upset about it. If the person viewing this were smart, they would look away.

But you aren't smart, and neither am I, and we peer on. We look at the family in their blissful white happiness, and we see the Grim Reaper take two steps closer and tap each of the teenagers on the shoulders. They turn around, and we see them beaming at him. Looking into the eyes of Death himself and not recognizing him because of their own blinding happiness. That unseeing is what hurts them the most in the end.

Death speaks, his voice chilling and cold. She shivers. Their smiles fade. They move away as he reaches down and touches the baby, picking him up, away from his lifelines, pulling them from him gently.

And we all see that he is dead. Together. You, me, Bridget, Eric. Death does not care, though. He puts on a pout and acts sympathetic, but his soul – it smiles. He is pleased by this one. He can already see the whole it is making to take another Marley from this young girl.

If we were seeing something unreal, what was going on in their souls and not what happened, then we would view what happened next with clarity. Indeed, we are, and we see the tall, dark, handsome one pull the blonde into a hug as the doctor walks away. He drags her out of the NICU and into the sunlight on the streets and shows her the sunlight, and she shrinks from it, not content with him and this sunlight that seems so fake. It has always been fake as long as a Marley was not alive.

If we weren't looking through our camera of souls, and if we were viewing the reality that is so fake, always so fake, we would see Bridget turn away from Eric, and Eric stare at the doctor's back, and neither of them saying anything, because there is nothing to say, because Marley is dead and that is that and there is nothing anyone can do or say to save him.

Another Marley gone.

But this one will never be gone, either. Bridget's life will be changed forever.

And now you and I view Bridget's mind. We look at her thoughts, dark and swirling, heading not downward, but upward, to Heaven, to attempt to see Marley and Marley as they meet and converge into one singular idea.

Marley her son died because she couldn't keep him alive long enough. Marley her mom died because she couldn't keep her alive long enough. She was the reason they each died. Bridget herself was the common factor in their deaths, and we watch as Bridget's mind darkens until we cannot see it any longer, and neither can she.

Days passed. Bridget stayed inside. She didn't want to leave her bedroom, but she had to eat and pee, and so she left for a few moments at a time, to grab a cookie or a snack bar, to empty her bladder in the bathroom, and then escape back to her room. Eric had gone back to classes, because he wanted a distraction from the horrible thing that had happened and, Bridget suspected, from Bridget herself.

They had barely talked since it happened. Bridget was glad, though. She didn't want to bring him down, not to her level. It was as if she were feeling the pain double, the pain for her mother and for her baby boy. Marley Vreeland's funeral was in less than 24 hours, and Bridget knew she had to sleep and shower and find something to wear that was suitable. But she didn't want to.

She really didn't want to.

So she didn't.

She laid down, but she could not sleep.

She turned on the shower, but she couldn't bring herself to do that either.

This was worse than the days and nights following the night with Eric.

The night she didn't yet have a baby.

She didn't have a baby now.

She and the Bridget of the past weren't much different, she thought. They were both quick to love and quicker to lose. Bridget wondered why she hadn't been able to hold onto Marley for longer. Why hadn't she been able to hold onto them? They'd slipped through her fingers. She was responsible for them, and she had failed.

Bridget felt like a failure. She felt like a lot of things, none of them positive. None of them anything concrete at all to discern into a real feeling with a real word and a real cure.

She wasn't depressed. She told herself that because it was the only thing she could do. She could console herself by telling lies, because if she told the truth, the lies would increase.

Bridget heard a knock on her door. She was in the middle of chanting 'I'm not like her' to herself, because she really wasn't, was she? She was different, just like everybody said. Definitely.

Oh, but she wasn't sure.

"Yes?" she asked with about as much emotion as you answer the telephone.

"Bee?" Eric asked. "I have a question."

"Okay," Bridget said, and Eric entered the room.

"Are you going to leave the room on your own, or do we have to drag you out?" he asked, indicating three girls standing in the doorway with menacing looks on their faces.

Bridget realized how different she was from all of them.

She was the only blonde.


	16. Chapter 17

**You guys wouldn't believe how hard this was. I literally wrote this chapter three times. I wanted it to be great, and I just couldn't get it how I wanted it. I like it now though. And the next chapter will be up sooner!**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 17

There were weeks then, long weeks that weren't weeks at all, but seemed like months. Bridget didn't know how long it was. She didn't pay attention to each day. She paid attention to one day, and only one day, and that was February 10th. The day Marley Vreeland had died. He didn't even have a middle name. It bothered Bridget. It bothered her through the legal stuff Eric had dealt with and Bridget had looked on as if through a window. It bothered her when she finally built up the courage to ask Eric about it, and he'd been confused as to why it was a problem. He didn't have any suggestions, at any rate, so she dropped it outwardly. Not inwardly though. She suspected she'd carry that with her until the day she died. But still she didn't do anything about it. What could she have done, at this point?

All Bridget knew was that it was sometime in the beginning – or was it the end? – of April when Carmen came to her, and that was the beginning.

It was sort of a nice day, a little gray, but the sun was trying to peek through the clouds. Bridget felt like the clouds. She didn't know what the sun was. She didn't like it, though. It was pushy. So was Carmen, as she knocked on Bridget's bedroom door. Bridget closed her laptop, where she'd been working on an English essay. She was going back to school the following Monday. It was a Friday, and Bridget felt like enjoying her last day of not having to go to school.

But she couldn't enjoy it, so she worked on English class.

"May I come in?" Carmen asked.

"No," Bridget said, tapping her nails on her laptop. No meant Yes, obviously, and Bridget prayed Carmen would know that. She shouldn't have doubted her friend, though.

"Okay," Carmen said as she settled herself on Bridget's desk. "Bee, I think this is sort of getting crazy."

"Maybe I am crazy," Bridget said whimsically, but it really didn't come off the way she thought it might, sort of like a gypsy, so she pushed it aside and responded again. "What do you want?" That didn't come out how she wanted it to, either, so Bridget just gave up and let Carmen do the talking.

Carmen didn't seem to mind. It was like she'd practiced this. "I want you to remember something. Remember when my dad left? Remember?" She waited until Bridget nodded. "Okay, so I was obviously really upset, right? Well, okay, now you're upset like I was. We both lost someone important. But Bridget…It's been two months and I think that maybe…it's time to move on? I mean, I know what I'm talking about. Of course I do. I watched my mom fighting and fighting happiness because she didn't want to let him go. She didn't want to be happy without him. Okay, well, I didn't know that was what was going on at the time, but I get it now! I see it! I see you in her, and…Bee, oh I don't want you to _be_ like her, okay? I love her and I love you and I don't want you to be her, okay?" And then Carmen apparently decided she wanted to leave Bee with those words of wisdom and just stood up and left.

Lena was next. Lena met Bridget in the parking lot after school, sometime at the end of April. "Bee, I wish that Carmen would have said something that would have helped," she said, leading Bridget to the grassy area next to the pavement. They were waiting for Eric to come pick them up – his Friday classes ended at 2, and he came to pick up Bridget and any of her friends who wanted a ride on Fridays. "But you know Carmen. She's just not very good at that kind of thing…" Bridget nodded. She didn't really like this. But what did she really like?

"So neither am I, but it's worth a shot. Okay, Kostos is…Remember how I broke up with him?" Bridget nodded. Why did her friends seem to think they could relate her situation to anything? It was entirely unique, to be responsible for the deaths of the people you loved the most. "M'kay, so I let him go, and I think maybe I shouldn't have." Bridget knew that. Where was Lena going with this? "I don't really know why you are letting Eric slip through the cracks like I let Kostos go, Bee."

Lena had this way of looking at you that was so powerful that you kind of felt like she could stop the world if she wanted to just by looking at it like that. So Bridget didn't look at Lena while Lena talked until the very end when Lena said that last thing.

"Letting him slip through the cracks? Lena, what are you even talking about? I love Eric," Bridget said, squirming a little bit on the ground.

"Yeah, Bridget?" Lena looked up at the clouds, exasperated. "When's the last time you told him that? When have you two every done anything together?"

"We did something together this morning! We made cereal!" That wasn't true. Eric made cereal for Bridget, who stared at the refrigerator, trying to find the milk somewhere inside its enigma of mystery.

"How hard is it to make cereal, though, Bee?" Lena's voice was soft now. She was calming down. Trying to calm down.

_Harder once you've murdered two people,_ Bridget thought, but didn't say. Why would she say it if she knew Lena would think she was crazy? Bridget wasn't crazy. Bridget had both feet firmly on the ground.

It was her head everyone worried about.

It was before school on a rainy Monday morning on May 15th when Tibby found her way to Bridget and made her attempt.

"This feels like a soap opera," she said, trying for some comic relief.

It didn't work. Bridget hardly faked a laugh. She did a forced 'ha' and that was it. Tibby wondered if maybe that was what Tibby was like when in a bad mood?

No, impossible. Tibby was…well, Tibby was allowed to be Tibby. Bridget was allowed to be Bridget, and right now Bridget was kind of trying for a Tibby impression that really just kind of stunk.

"Hey, I know that it's only been, well…" quick mental calculation here "three months. Ish. So I just have one question and then I'm gonna leave you alone, 'kay?" Tibby glanced up at the umbrella she held above her head. It was Nicky's smiley face umbrella. Tibby found it a little ironic. I mean, you use it when it's raining, right? So why would you want to have a little floating smiley face over your head?

Tibby much liked her rain drop umbrella, but Nicky had ruined it like he ruined lots of things – with his teeth.

So here Tibby was, in her galoshes and raincoat and ironic umbrella, trying to get her whale on the shore of a best friend back into the water.

Oh! That was it! Get her back into the water!

"I hafta go – important business – must attend to – no need to thank me for all my help." Tibby dashed into the school to find and corner Carmen and Lena.

Beg, Borrow, and Steal found themselves with money in no time flat – well, okay, it took three weeks of hardcore piggy bank breaking and credit card stealing and begging – lots and lots of begging – and their trip for five to beautiful Baja California was booked for the day after school let out.

"Okay, here's the deal. They won't come if we tell them where we're going," Tibby whispered outside Bridget's front door at 4AM on June 14th. "So we're going to tell them we're going to California."

Lena nudged Tibby in the ribs. "We can't _lie._"

"Well, we are going to California! Sort of. …We'll figure something out in the moment. Inspiration will strike. Promise." Tibby bravely rang Bridget's doorbell. They waited. Nothing. She rang it again. And then again. On the third wait after the ring Eric drunkenly appeared at the door, rubbing his eyes. They were bloodshot and tired-looking.

"Eric!" Carmen exclaimed perkily. "You and Bridget and us are going on vacation."

"Huh?" Eric asked, slumping against the door. He appeared to think this was a dream.

"We're leaving for the airport in a half hour! Go pack."

"What?" He stood up, sensing that they were serious.

"We're taking Bridget on a rejuvenating vacation. And you're coming with because she is madly in love with you," Lena explained plainly.

"First of all, she won't come. Second of all, she is not madly in love with me at all." He leaned in closer. "She hates me."

"She doesn't hate you," Lena said. "She doesn't know what she feels. We do."

"She won't like it. I don't like it. I have work in the morning." At that thought, Eric appeared a little hopeful about the vacation. "On second thought…"

"It's worth a shot, right?" Tibby chimed in.

"Depends on where we're going."

"Can it be a surprise?"

"No."

"For her at least? She won't come if she knows where we're going."

Eric sighed. "May as well just surprise both of us then." He looked resigned. "Listen…" His voice dropped to a whisper. "Bee had a real bad night last night, okay? I don't want anything to make it worse for her…" His pupils were dark amidst the red veins in the white. "Please just cancel the tickets if they're to anywhere like…Oh, no. Oh," and then he let out the longest string of curses you've ever heard. It was then that it occurred to Tibby that he might possibly be a little drunk. Not so much so that it was immediately noticeable, and he must've been good at hiding it. "You aren't bringing her to Baja, are you?"

"We are," Lena murmured timidly.

"NO!" Eric exclaimed. "No no I will not let you take her back to that godforsaken place…"

"Do you have any better ideas?" Tibby challenged.

He thought for a minute. "Do you really think it'll work, though?"

"I think it's worth a shoot. Look, our flight leaves at 8. We'll wake Bridget. You just…pack for a week, alright?"

Eric stayed where he was, so Carmen took the liberty of grabbing his arm and taking him to his room.

Lena and Tibby went to get Bridget.

Somehow the five of them were on a plane at 8:30AM, taxiing down the runway. Eric was passed out in his seat already, Bridget was sulking in the window seat, and Tibby and Carmen were listening to Lena talk whimsically about how it was kind of like going to Greece, and didn't they think so too?

"Girl," Carmen said, "you have got to tell me – why did you break up with him? Why would you do something like that to a guy like…_that_?"

"Because he's too good! I love him too much!"

"Wouldn't want to love someone too much. You might end up being too happy, huh?" Carmen laughed.

"Yeah, I guess I'm stupid. But what are my options, anyway?" Lena rubbed her arm. "It's not like I can take it back now."

"Lena, come _on_, you can always always always take something back if you love someone enough." Tibby took Lena's hand. "Watch. Carmen, those pants make your butt look fat."

Carmen mocked being offended.

"Wait, no, I take that back, I love your butt," Tibby said. "Don't you, Bee?"

"Huh?" Bridget looked up from the SkyMall catalog.

"Wait…is that a peeing statue?" Tibby grabbed the magazine from Bridget.

"Yeah…But if you want it to pee you have to get extra parts."

Tibby thought this was hilarious, and that set off Lena and Carmen, and pretty soon even Bridget was laughing.

**Comments are legitimately what makes me post. ;)**


	17. Chapter 18

**Hey, guys. Apologies for the horrid lateness of this chapter. But high school is demanding. With homework, tests, projects, clubs, and my utter unpreparedness for it all, I'm trying to find the rhythm and get it all working in perfect order, but it's hard. Remember to review!**

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 18

The water sparkled as the car jiggled and bumped all over the unpaved streets. Bridget sat with her eyes stubbornly closed, her arms crossed. She was in the back seat. Eric was next to her, and he had his arm slumped around her shoulder like a flag going into a battle that has already been lost.

Lena, Carmen, and Tibby were squished up front where they could consult on directions. Bridget and Eric both refused to help. So much for opposites attract. They were so alike it was scary sometimes, and sometimes they were so different it was even scarier. "I think you make a left up here," Tibby said, looked through the windshield that was smeared with bug guts and bird poop.

"Why do you think that?" Lena asked, the map spread out in front of her nose where she could be sure to not be able to read it at all.

"Because there's the sign," Tibby said, pointing. Lena pulled the map down to peer skeptically over the top of it. Oh. There it was.

"Well, that wasn't so hard," Carmen said cheerfully.

"Carmen, it took an hour to make a drive that the guy at the hotel said was twenty minutes tops," Tibby, with the reality check, said.

"It could have been worse…" Carmen said defensively. She navigated the driveway up to the camp and then stopped in front of a weathered building that said OFFICE in bold pink letters.

"Ready to clear on out?" Tibby asked, turning around in her seat to the sulking couple in the back.

"Not really," said Eric, who was currently suffering from a hangover.

"Should we come back tomorrow?" Lena whispered to Carmen and Tibby.

"No," Bridget said, surprising them all. "We'll just go, okay?" She pulled open her door, pulling herself away from Eric's arm and beginning to walk. Eric looked confused for a minute but then decided he'd better follow her.

And then they were both on Mexican soil, inside the camp itself where everything had begun a year ago. There were some girls kicking around a soccer ball on one field, and some swimming in the clear blue water, and some milling about the cabins. It was almost time for dinner. Bridget remembered it as though it were yesterday, as cliché as it sounds. She felt like a Hallmark greeting card.

_I remembered it as though it were yesterday – you and I met and fell in love._

Ick. Bridget didn't like that stuff. She was sure of it – well, almost sure. Maybe she did like Hallmark greeting cards…

She didn't know. She wished she did but the cruel reality of the thing – and sometimes you had to look reality right in its ugly face – was that she didn't have any clue what she was supposed to be like. Guilt does strange and awful things to people. It twists their hearts until they're nothing like what they used to be. Like a Capri Sun pouch, once full, now empty and bent out of shape and barely a fragment of what it used to be.

Bridget was a Capri Sun pouch that was empty, drained of her humanity by the killing of two innocent people. Both of the Marleys that she had known and loved, however briefly, had died. And there had to be a correlation! It made sense. Did anything else make sense as much as this did?

_Dad – sorry for leaving like that. Here's picture of Mexico to make it up to you. I'll be back on Saturday or Sunday. –Bridget_

Bridget was a creature of habit now. When in Mexico, while sitting on the exact same beach you made love and a baby on one night a lifetime ago, write a letter to your father so that things don't get too out of whack. She'd picked up a postcard in the hotel lobby and stuffed it into her shirt so she wouldn't have to pay 59 cents for it. Bridget was bad, and she didn't care.

"That was short and sweet," Eric said, tugging his shirt back on over his wet chest. He was peeking over her shoulder, and she shielded the paper from him.

"He likes that," she said quietly, looking at a couple of tanned soccer players on a cliff nearby. Her eyes seemed wet, but maybe it was a trick of the light.

"Does he?" Eric asked, prompting now, searching for an answer, something he could say. But there was nothing. He'd said it all, and it all wasn't enough if she wouldn't listen. Nothing was enough if she wouldn't listen. Love could go one way, and he felt like it had since February, but helping couldn't.

She didn't respond. She didn't need to. They both knew that her dad liked short and sweet, at least outwardly. But who knew what people wanted, or needed, inwardly.

"It's hard to tell what people need, Bridget," he said. He'd been calling her by her full name for awhile now. It was just the thing to do. Maybe she didn't mind. He hoped she did. He hated that hope, that tiny little flame that was unstoppable. But it was hard to love someone who gave you nothing in return. He was human.

"I know." The blue sea was still. Totally calm. There was nothing to disturb the water, nothing to make it think it had killed the people it loved. And who knew which one was next? The sea wouldn't know – it couldn't know. So it would turn them off, that stupid sea. Bridget thought it was the stupidest water she'd ever seen. But she was probably the stupidest human it had ever seen. They were the same, Bridget and the sea. The water had witnessed her night of…of something. It was something. They weren't sleeping together – that just made it seem innocent. And they weren't making love, because it wasn't love-driven. It was lust. But it was too momentous to be called sex. So it just Was. It Was. She liked that.

"Like right now?" Eric meant to sound brave, like the guys do in movies, but his voice cracked a little and it lost the bravado and obviously he would have to go for a different approach.

He could feel his cell phone vibrating in his pocket, probably one of the girls, because they were back at the hotel by now to give Bridget and Eric some alone time, but it honestly didn't phase him. He was focused now. Who knew when his next opportunity would be?

"I don't think he cares right now, to be honest, where I am."

"That's not true," Eric said, because it wasn't, and it didn't even matter that she hadn't answered the question. Or maybe she had. Maybe her answer was that she couldn't tell what she needed, either.

"I think it's love," Eric said.

"It just Is, it's not love," Bridget said automatically. She was missing the point.

"Not between you and me. Well, yes, sort of. I mean, what you need. You need love. Like that quote. From Gone With the Wind." He resisted mumbling 'stupid movie' because he really didn't know how Bridget felt about it. That was the problem.

"Tibby would know it," Bridget said.

"You do too, we watched it last month," Eric said. "You should be kissed, and often, by someone who knows how. Only different, a little. You should be loved. By someone who knows how." He was going to sound cocky here, but it was too late… "And I know how, Bridget. Why won't you let me love you?"

"Why won't you call me Bee?" she challenged.

"Same reason, I expect," Eric said, rubbing his arm.

"Because you're stubborn?" She dared him to say yes. But then she realized that it could go both ways: she wouldn't let him love her because she was stubborn. She dropped her eyes to the sand, the tiny grains in her palm, then being poured out like sour milk because they weren't good anymore.

"Yeah, I think that's why," Eric said, and he knew that she knew what he was talking about.

"Well, excuse me," Bridget said, standing up, "if I want to feel guilty for awhile, okay? Or, maybe, my whole life has been one guilt fest? I'm sorry for that, but it's not my fault. Except it is." The sarcasm was second-rate at best, really not high quality sarcasm at all, but Bridget took it and ran. Literally. She started running, beach running being one of her old favorite things. She'd imagined teaching her son running. She'd imagined he would run before he would walk, what with the parents he had.

That was a thing of the past, though. Completely irrelevant. Or maybe it was the only thing that was relevant.

Bridget was tired of thinking deeply. So she entered that non-thinking state while Eric followed her along the beach until she got to the tourist area and looped back around. Bridget didn't do any real thinking except where they would eat that night. Eric did a lot of real thinking, too much. It made him lose his stride sometimes, and man, was Bridget fast for a girl who hadn't run anywhere except in gym class for the last four months.

But they had to stop sometime. Everything stops sometime. And when they did, on that little beach that was so insignificant to the rest of the world, but probably the most important thing to them, Eric knew what he had to do.

So once Bridget had caught her breath, and under the careful supervision of the hot sun, Eric leaned over to Bridget, who had once been his soul mate, but who had somehow lost her soul right here on this very beach, and tried to find it with his mouth. He kissed her, a little awkwardly at first, and then more naturally, and then she was really kissing back, and they were lying down on the sand and rolling around holding each other, and it was very romantic without being one bit sexual. They were completely focused on each other, and Bridget forgot about what she was supposed to remember to do in situations like this and left herself open and raw as she and Eric went in search of her soul.

Eric pulled back after some time, and said, "You ready to tell me why you're guilty?"

Bridget bit her lip. She didn't think. She was beyond thinking, she'd had enough thinking for her lifetime.

"Yeah." And she pulled her hair out of its loose bun and shook it out, and it glowed under the sun, somehow not pale after all that time indoors. "The problem is I keep killing the people I love."

Eric didn't laugh, even though it was kind of funny, he had to admit. "You keep what?"

"Killing the people I love…" She punched his arm playfully. "Don't laugh!"

"But what does that mean?"

"Well…My mom died and I was the one who drove her over the edge, did you know that?"

"I didn't know that."

"Well, I did. Because maybe if I wasn't so _needy…_"

"You were, what, seven?"

"It doesn't matter, I was needy."

"Wasn't she sick though? Didn't she have depression?"

Bridget's eyes were downcast, and she was starting to close up again. So Eric took her hand and turned it palm up. He started tracing the lines, the creases in her skin, on it, and said, "That's a chronic disease, Bee. It doesn't go away."

"I know," Bridget said, slowly realizing, now that she said it aloud, that her theory – the one she'd formulated when she was very young – didn't make much sense.

"So it wasn't your fault that she had it. Some people just…have it. There's nothing we can do but be happy." Eric moved to her back, tracing her angel bones with his index fingers.

"Yeah," Bridget said, blinking slowly. But then there was… "What about our son?"

"What about him? He was premature. There wasn't anything anybody could do about that, either," Eric said, feeling a Southern accent creep into his voice that sometimes came out of nowhere when he wasn't careful. He didn't care.

"I did something wrong, in the pregnancy. I must have…"

"Bridget, you're sixteen," Eric said, poking her shoulder. "Sixteen year olds aren't supposed to have babies for a reason."

"Maybe we shouldn't have…That part was my fault." Bridget was looking at him now.

"Oh, no way. That's _my_ line. That part was _my_ fault."

Bridget laughed. Eric thought it was the best sound he'd ever heard. He knew they'd found her soul, and somehow it might all be okay.

"I think maybe we both share the blame. After all…" Bridget trailed off, implications thick in her voice.

"Bridget Vreeland, you are the most beautiful creature alive," Eric said suddenly, knowing it was true.

Bridget just laughed, rolling her shoulders back as if a great weight had been lifted. Eric watched her hair fall down her back and glint in the sun, and then at her smiling face, and he was kissing her again because he wanted to, not because he had to in order to get something out of her.

It wasn't perfect. The mistakes had already been made. They couldn't be reversed. But the best the two of them could do was know that they were on a beach in Mexico, the place it had all started, and it was going to be okay.

**The End**


End file.
